


Before the Mast

by arrows-and-roses (Prinncess)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Bathroom Sex, F/M, Love Triangles, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Oral Sex, Relationship(s), Shower Sex, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 56,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9369308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinncess/pseuds/arrows-and-roses
Summary: Monkey D. Rill thinks about boys a lot—and she's probably more terrified of talking to them than anything else. Her grandpa insists she marry a marine officer, maybe a vice admiral, while her older brother, Ace, declares that she's better off avoiding any mingling with pirates or marines. But no one's left happy when she falls for a man over ten years her senior.





	1. Prologue

Ace mapped her future right then, pausing only to scribble his declaration on the back of one of her study's graphs.

"Wait! Ace—" 

"Now!" Ace interrupted, ignoring the frantic look as she reached for her graph and prayed his ink never spilled onto the front side. "Let I, Portgas D. Ace, warn every man in the sea: no pirate or lousy navy dog shall ever touch my baby sister." 

"'Ear, 'ear," Luffy spat between bits of food. 

Rill sighed and gently reached for her ruined document a second time. 

"Not that I mind so much, but I don't think that leaves a lot of options for me," she pointed out. 

Ace considered this, his hand relenting to her persistent tugs while he drummed his free fingers against his chin. "That does put a bit of a damper on you getting a boyfriend." 

Rill hid her cheeks beneath her shirt as a hideous flare of red consumed them. "You're reading too much into this!" she insisted. 

The fire-cursed pirate ignored her for several minutes, watching Luffy as he continued to feast furiously. Realizing he was also starving, he reached for a handful of grub and brought it to his mouth. Rill's cooking was a rare treat these days, directly timed with Ace's visits. If the Old Man took an extended assignment, sometimes she broke free from her books to cook up these hardened little cakes with delicious meats and curries beaten inside. Luffy loved those, but Ace craved her creative mix of sake and honey flowers. There was something else she added in, but since Dadan taught her the recipe, she refused to disclose it to either of them. The journey back home always dragged on with the added expense of his salivating mouth and a promise for scrumptious food. 

Rill waited in her chair, willing her face to return to its pale colour. She thought frequently about boys, men, navy personnel, bankers, merchants, blacksmiths, political members, teachers, swordsmen, bounty hunters, and even, yes, pirates, but that's where her curiosities died. The thoughts were enough to quell any hormonal instinct to seek a partner, because truth told, she couldn't sit in the same room as a member of the opposite sex without bursting into a round of hiccups, and if Ace really thought any sort of man could find that tolerable, he surely sported a twisted view of his gender. 

Singlehood. Singlehood worked well for her. 

Perhaps the only one not confined in deep thought was the youngest at the table. When Luffy's belly ached and his hands needed to stretch in order to reach his mouth, the younger boy decided he was finished. He rubbed his belly, grinning at his satisfied stomach and briefly pondered when he could eat again before the answer to Ace's debate randomly struck him. 

"She can marry a fisherman?" he suggested uncaringly. If he got his way, Rill would never marry, and that way she could balance between her books and cooking for him. 

His finger reached for his nose, ready to clear it before he realized his sister was watching. Hesitating, he turned his head to the side, hoping she wouldn't notice his poor display in manners 'cause all he wanted to do was get the gross stuff out. 

"Luffy!" Ace exclaimed instead. The rubber boy shouted his surprise, removing his finger at once. "Good idea, kid. Riddle can marry a fisherman. Maybe a scholar, too, but I don't want ya dropping to death just 'cause he bored the life outta ya." 

The two boys roared together, enjoying the comical image of a dried up Rill while the ladder reached for the empty plates lining the table. She smiled over their amusement, resisting the swelling in her stomach as her anxiety bubbled to the surface. Rill would marry no one, she declared for herself right then and there, and took the vandalized graph aboard her pile of dishes. 

"You're worse than grandpa," she scolded on her way out. 

"Better listen to me than him," he shouted after her. "You'd get fed up with whatever crappy officer and his by-the-book crap, anyway." 

She wondered how much of his words pulled truth, and how much were simply meant to antagonize their grandfather's wishes. After setting the dishes in the sink—she decided she would wash them once Luffy went to bed and she could peacefully revise her lessons while scrubbing dirty cutlery—Rill examined her damaged graph, folded it in fours, and placed it away on her bookshelf. 

It was all just silly banter to pass the time.


	2. Chapter 1

"…that's a mermaid's carcass," Rill repeated to the small group for a fifth time. No one offered as little as a grunt at her reminder. One scientist even picked his nose while the other three shuddered together, their hands rubbing in rapid fashion as a cold wind rippled through their jackets. They all sat silently upon their heels, watching the striking, dead creature rotting along the shore. Rill scanned the coast, searching for the group leader, Dr. Megalodon, who had wandered back to the ship some twenty minutes earlier. She walked forward a few paces, testing if her range of sight could improve, and nearly stepped on the mermaid's bright pink hair.

"Watch it, kid!" Scout shouted. He removed his finger from his nose, pointing it in her direction. "You want to contaminate any more of this?"

"Sorry."

"THAT'S NOT HOW YOU APOLOGIZE!"

"I'm… very sorry?" she tried again. The men sighed.

"You've gotta be one of the most socially-stunted girls I've ever seen," another one piped up. Rill turned, and realized it was Odis. At least, she thought it was Odis who sported the thick brown beard—the one with blonde, braided hair was Raymond, and the bald guy had the name she never remembered. Or was the bearded man the one she couldn't remember, and the bald guy was Odis? Scout made things easiest—he sported a red crew cut and a soul patch. Rill frowned, biting her lip as she tried to go over their names again and batted her foot impatiently at the returning waves.

"No," she answered, deciding she would simply avoid titles until she could remember them all. "I just don't really see the concern," she admitted as an afterthought.

The bald one—Odis? not Odis?—abandoned the huddled group and joined her on foot. She cautiously maneuvered outside their manmade circle, as far away from the mermaid as needed and providing him with a gracious amount of room.

"The big deal is there's a dead friggen mermaid on a winter island. THAT DOESN'T JUST HAPPEN, KID."

"My name is Rill."

"I KNOW WHAT YOUR NAME IS!"

"Nevermind, nevermind," she dismissed. Her eyes flickered back towards the island's inlet, where a small figure popped into view above the white hilltop. "I see him!" she said, and pointed to the path they had all carved with their bodies only half an hour earlier. The snow drifted sparingly, but a freshly-fallen sheet covered a few centimetres above their work. She never knew the weather along the Grand Line changed so sporadically. She had read about it, surely, but it took the experience to really understand what those masses of text referred to; only the day before she had lounged on the deck, baring tiny shorts and sunglasses. Now the thought of even removing her mittens stressed her.

The men followed her index finger, fixated on the small form of Dr. Megalodon struggling with a thick, blue tarp towered over his head. Raymond and one of the possible Odis' hopped up from their ankles and rushed off to help him.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Meg!" she shouted as the small cluster grew closer. "I almost stepped on her hair!"

"YOU IDIOT, DON'T TELL HIM THAT!" the bald guy beside her shouted.

"But if I contaminated the evidence, he needs to be wary, right?"

Baldie continued glowering at her. Realizing it was possibly a hopeless battle, she fell silent until the rest of their party joined them. Dr. Meg, a man many times her age, almost sized up to her in height. His white, bearded chin reached her neck, his glossy, hazel eyes met her mouth—she liked smiling down on him during his lectures, watching all the changes in his face as he fed her mind or criticized her work. For instance, when he felt like having a bit of fun at her expense, the corners of his eyes crinkled ahead of time, giving her a good warning that she should take whatever left his mouth next with little consideration. On other occasions, like when he planned to quiz her, she noticed that his eyebrows rose dangerously high above his eyes; subtle indications weren't his forte, but they supplemented a great asset for her and her fellow intern.

Before she could raise a question, Raymond came up behind her, swatting at her pony-tail. "Quit stalling, Rull."

"You know what my name is," she shot back, right before she greeted the lead doctor. His short stature amused her yet again as he fumbled with a black kit in tow. She waited with her hands open until he finally lifted it into her arms, and quickly returned to the rest of the equipment stocked towards the inlet and away from the ocean's reach. With all of the kits properly opened, each of the six took time to remove their thick, winter coats until only their standard, obsidian windbreakers separated them from the cold. All hats and gloves were dumped into a pile, while gloves and medical masks replaced their tuques, scarves, and mittens. None of the men complained about their discomfort, and Rill tried her best to mimic their stride by swallowing all of her opinions regarding frostbite and senseless procedure.

Raymond moved around her, unfolding the tarp towards the ocean, and clicked his tongue impatiently for his comrades to hurry. The two possible Odis' glared as they trudged past her, but she batted them away with an unwavering smile. "So," she charged forward, her focus returned to Dr. Meg. "Theories and speculations?"

"Rill, I expect a better handle on habit from you! Since Hypher isn't here, why don't you take the lead today? Share your observations with us, Miss Monkey."

Rill grimaced at the uncomfortable title. "Miss Rill sounds nicer," she suggested.

"QUIT BEING FUSSY!" bearded possible Odis shouted.

This time, she sighed. "You guys are doing plenty of scolding today! …and you should really watch that tarp." Rill frowned as Raymond grappled with the edge of the tarp, his arms struggling to unfold it while his feet moved mindlessly beneath him. Twice he neared the edge of the mermaid's rotting fin, and if nearly stepping on her hair had been detrimental, surely kicking away at her pliable flesh wouldn't improve matters. "You're going to—HEY, RAYMOND, YOU'RE GOING TO STEP ON HER FIN!"

"QUIT YELLING! YOU'RE DISTRACTING ME!"

Rill's body moved faster than her thoughts. She lunged over the mermaid and wrapped her lanky frame around a toppling Raymond. Together, they slammed into the brittle, icy sand and rolled until their backs collided with the frigid, ocean waves. She immediately abandoned him, crawling carefully towards the corpse. The violet fin wavered gently in the folds of pushing water, but was unscathed by Raymond's boot. Relieved, she settled back into the sand.

"That was fortunate," she told the group.

Dr. Meg's head bounced as he guffawed into his sleeve while Raymond returned to his feet. He trampled along her widespread fingers, and when she didn't so much as blink his way, he dug his heel into her knuckles.

"You… bloody… MORON!"

"My brothers used to do that, too—your boots are really uncomfortable," she added, and finally silenced when he abandoned her fingers to enclose his fist around her neck. Rill obliged with the upheaval. Her knees bent to further assist him, and though he raised her higher than her height, she tried to keep her toes from struggling to reach the ground. "This is… really uncomfortable, too. My neck is sensitive to touch and—"

"You've been a pain in my ass since we brought you into this program!" Raymond interrupted, his voice lowered in a growl. His golden eyebrows kneaded together as he continued glaring into her. Was this his idea of intimidation, she wondered. Rill remembered Ace's vicious smile, something far more bone-chattering than a trademark scowl, but finally conceded that maybe her antics were getting too annoying.

"I am sorry. But my brothers—"

"We get it! Your brothers are helpless idiots."

Rill frowned. "That's not what I—"

"THAT'S PRETTY MUCH WHAT YOU SAY!" Scout shouted from behind her, before she could argue over another pointless detail.

She sighed. "They're just a handful. They don't listen very well—"

"—astounding that your genes carried you this far through the ages—" bald, possible Odis muttered.

"I'm sorry, Raymond! This is all still very new for me! I promise not to contaminate the evidence, and I really promise not to push you again."

A few seconds of silence passed, before his eyebrows separated again and his stare relented into a careful stern. She continued to watch his face as he lowered her back onto the beach, and when his hand left her neck, he gently tugged down on her pony-tail. "We've been doing this for a long, fucking time," he reminded her, but she appreciated the gentle appeal now added to his tone. "You need to listen more."

"Need to listen," she repeated.

"It takes more than books to get through this program. You and Hypher are the newest recruits we've had in years."

"Must read more."

"No, you idiot," Raymond admonished. "It takes skill. You need strength—"

Rill had her mouth open, ready to remind him that she possessed an almost inhuman quality of strength, but surrendered to the warning glint in his eyes. Right; need to listen more.

Raymond hesitated for a moment; she wondered if he thought perhaps she would interject and so her lips pursed together, creating a thin line along her mouth. His smile swallowed his earlier stern. "Good," he said. "Now answer the doctor; whatdya think happened here?"

The men finished unfolding the tarp while she gathered her thoughts. No one said a word to aid her, and Rill stepped away from their busying cluster, her eyes trained on the horizon. In the distance, massive glaciers towered over the ocean's surface, but no ships or living creatures breached her sight. It was too cold for even the local merchants to travel about that day.

"What about a current?" she said, drawing her gaze back to the mermaid. "The Grand Line has plenty of vicious pathways, and if this one was just a little bigger, a little stronger, it could've drawn her in and transported her to a colder section of the ocean. Where she then proceeded to freeze."

They waited for her next theory, not so much as giving her a hint as to whether this one held any merit. "Hmm… although I guess the same could be said if she simply became lost. Or if she was being hunted. The Noble ships—"

Bearded possible Odis cut her off with a warning look, and she nodded. "I mean, black market traders are always after merfolk. Are there any intrusions on her body?"

"Not presently visible," Dr. Meg answered. "I agree with your initial idea. This seems to be the work of a current. The bruises along her torso indicate she may have tried to escape it, but even the wildest roads of the sea can claim the lives of mermaids. It's very, very tragic."

"All of the currents are getting stronger," Scout said as he and Raymond photographed different angles of the corpse. "Sea levels are on the rise again; it's the same shit we've been telling them for years."

"Possibly," Dr. Meg said, "but that hardly constitutes a connection. The weather's always a bit peaky on the Grand Line, and that certainly interrupts the ocean mood outside it, too. "

"But it's not unpredictable," bald possible-Odis interrupted. "Sporadic, changeable, inconsistent at times—but not unpredictable like those morons like to think. If they'd open a ruddy textbook every now and then…" He beckoned for Rill to join him at his side and unrolled a thin sheet of clear plastic for her to gently wrap around the mermaids' tail. Together, they skirted the sheet in three or four layers, slowly making their way down towards her fins. It wasn't until she was securely restrained that the four men—with Dr. Meg and Rill training their eyes for any accidents—heaved her onto the blue tarp. Rill gazed into the mermaid's glossed, lavender eyes, haunted by the vacant smile watching back before the tarp enclosed around her.

"She didn't expect to die like this."

Scout shrugged and retrieved a cigarette from within his windbreaker. He struggled unearthing his lighter from his pocket, but eventually succeeded in lighting the flame. "Accidents of nature."

"Hypher's gonna be jealous he missed this," Baldie mused.

Rill turned towards the ocean, ignoring any steers leering her way. Her hands went to work, reorganizing the items in the open kits before sealing them shut again, all the while straining to follow their conversation.

"I never let a damn fever take me out from work," bearded possible-Odis muttered.

Raymond snorted from her left. "Didn't you get dengue fever your first week in? LIAR."

"THAT'S DIFFERENT, it was a nasty virus. Not some little flu bug."

"Coward."

"TO HELL WITH YOU, YOU FLIMSY BASTARD. ALMOST STEPPING ON A FUCKING FIN! WHAT ARE YOU—A TRAINEE? YOU'RE NO BETTER THAN THAT IDIOT!"

The two men jumped to their feet. That idiot turned back to watch their mountainous bodies crouch in a fighting stance. "Yeaaaaah, rumble! You can do it, Mr. Raymond!" she cheered.

"YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TAKE HIS SIDE!"

Rill didn't have the heart to inform him she simply couldn't recall his name.

* * *

Back on board the ship, Rill stalled as long as she could: organizing evidence containers, offering to help gut the fish for their next meal, and even trying to engage the good doctor in solid conversation about his last sabbatical. All of her efforts failed when Raymond handed her a small basin of water, topped with a folded cloth.

"Go take care of your peer," he said.

Rill scowled into the water at her unhappy reflection. "I'm not a nurse!"

"You have three different biology degrees. Two chemistry degrees—wait, does she have the chemistry degrees?" Raymond called up to the upper deck. Scout poked his head forward.

"Yeah, and a physics one. The kid took a chem one, too, and geo."

Raymond snorted before turning back to the Rill, who's glare hardly phased his interest. "That's basically pre-med times three," he offered.

Dr. Megalodon clucked his tongue from a little table propped by the mainmast. "That's stretching it a bit."

"Out here, it's close enough," Raymond dismissed. "Wasn't her whole package pre-med?"

"So? All of you have a hundred, collectively."

"DON'T USE STUPID EXAGGERATIONS!" the bald possible Odis shouted from behind her. Rill whirled back to glare at him.

"I'm not a nurse just because I'm the only woman on board!"

"This isn't a sexist thing," bald possible Odis said. "You're his peer. This is your program, and that makes you two… brethren. You treat him. If Isamu was sick, I'd get Raymond to nurse his wounds."

Somewhere from the upper deck, the bearded Isamu snorted, but Rill rejoiced over the revealed missing name.

"Okay, Odis. Your reasoning is stupid, Odis, but I respect your stupid assessment nonetheless… Odis."

Odis angrily stalked off while Raymond deposited the basin into her unwilling arms. The water sloshed backwards, drenching her front with warm water that would quickly freeze if she didn't get to the hull in time. Rill wasn't careful as she vanished down the steps, letting the water trail in little puddles behind her. When Hypher's room—all but emptied besides the patient to thwart risk of spreading his ailment—came into view, she carelessly cupped the tub beneath one arm while her free hand reached for the knob. It pulled open before her mittened fingers even touched the brass.

Her peer was six months younger than her and a good six inches taller. Short, thick tufts of blonde hair—typically artificially spiked—lined the top of his head, leaving the impression of some sort of rebellious nature, but today it was flattened against his forehead and drenched in sweat. A small scar from his old eyebrow piercing blazed white against his tawny skin—any superfluous body modifications (usually anything except simple ear piercings and tattoos that could be easily hidden) were strictly prohibited in the program. Hypher was societally handsome, and Rill made a habit of only exchanging the most necessary of words with him.

"…hey," he croaked. She stared at his stomach, wondering above all else why it was naked. He had little freckles inked along his left side, a striking brown against his pale canvas, as though God himself painted them on as a gentle afterthought.

"Hrgh," she grunted, after counting 6 thick birthmarks. She lifted the basin towards him, willing her head to snap back and greet his stare, but her eyes remained on his stomach, noting that he was thinner than the muscled carvings she always pictured. Could it be that it was simply a result of a few days' sickness, or his natural figure?

"See anything you like?"

Hypher was chuckling before Rill fully digested his comment, and even after she wondered if it meant what she thought it did, she doubted herself for another full minute until he opened his door wider.

"You can come in and nurse me," he offered.

"No," she refused, the word rolling from her tongue swiftly as she jerked off her mittens. She stared down at her hands and closed them around the gloves, waiting until her knuckles turned white before she spoke again. "I'm not a nurse," she repeated.

"True enough. Not many nurses turn that red over a bit of skin," he chuckled. Rill turned her back to him, her hands quickly finding her cheeks and regretting the heat engulfing them. She thought of a few lies—it was stuffy, she was still overwhelmed from the expedition, his breath was terrible—and dismissed all of them.

"You don't even look that sick," she said as she turned to face him again.

Hyper shrugged. "It's just a fever," he agreed as he rinsed the cloth from the basin with only one hand. Gently, he massaged the cloth into his torso, and Rill diverted her gaze to the ceiling. How many times would someone need to jump on the flooring above her before they crashed through and pinned her to her death? Her brothers were capable of that level of destruction; she paused to ponder the condition of their house now that she wasn't there to monitor Luffy's antics. He was probably living in a tree, or at least a pile of rubble once called home.

"Subtly isn't one of your handy skills, huh?"

Rill's neck immediately jerked down. She quickly placed her mittens in separate pockets of her coat, trying to discreetly wipe away the sweat that had collected during her daydreaming. "I just need to do a few stretches," she lied. Extending one leg towards the stairs, she leaned the opposite direction, giving a half-hearted stretch while he watched her with a smile.

"Sure. Thanks for the tub," he called after her as she quickly straightened herself and walked away. Rill was already making her way towards the stairs, but she spared him another second, twitching her head in a violent jerk as she dashed up the steps. His laughter trailed behind her.

* * *

Three days later, Dr. Megalodon, Hypher, Odis, and Rill gathered in the examination room below the sleeping cabins to survey their specimen. Patient Lavender, as Rill had dubbed her, died from blunt force trauma to the head. The back of her skull was crushed in, the blow having punctured her brain which proceeded to hemorrhage until she bled out—Rill's earlier assessment appeared conclusive, with the blow seemingly instigated by debris trapped in the same current. They couldn't rule out the possibility of Black Market traders attacking her, but it wasn't a theory worth resting on with only minimal evidence present.

The mermaid's corpse was preserved on ice collected from the winter island, and though it wasn't to anyone's preference, they had all agreed to stay within the winter zone, if only until they finished the autopsy to determine her cause of death. The ship was limited on preservations, and if the heat surmounted too strongly, bacteria would breed and strip away the rest of her.

"We shouldn't have waited this long," Odis muttered as he hovered over Rill, who polished the medical instruments. She glanced up at him, but he only jerked his head towards Hypher, finally dressed again and donning a white medical mask.

Never one to miss attention, the youngest of the group chuckled. "I appreciate that you did. How many times in my life am I gonna get the chance to dissect a mermaid?"

"You're only observing, punk. We're not letting whatever the hell you have contaminate her."

"Not that a flu would be so harmful to her now," Rill said. She finished polishing the last scalpel, handing it off to Dr. Megalodon, who remained silent as he made his first incision directly down her torso. Rill witnessed several human autopsies while in school, but the mermaid's altered blood color—a magnificent oozing gold running down the blade—made it far more engrossing. Practices never brewed the same fascination as field work, and poor health or not, she understood the importance of Hypher standing witness.

As though trailing her thoughts, Hypher carefully maneuvered around the doctor, coming up beside her. "Next time it'll be us," he murmured by her ear, and though she didn't turn to him, she angled her head just enough for him to catch her smile.

As Dr. Meg seeded through her body, the rest of them watched silently, their ears trained on every slosh of flesh and the pencil scraping against paper from Odis' note-taking. Once her torso was cropped and pulled open, the lead doctor's eyes flickered towards the interns.

"Blood discoloration! Go!"

"Sulfhemoglobinemia?" Hypher suggested immediately.

"Unlikely," Rill said. "All of her blood is gold-coloured. Something like this… I would suggest a rare defect previously unheard of in the surface world. Possibly influenced by specific gene breeding, diet, natural selection? If she was from a remote village, it would certainly limit the gene pool. But I don't think it caused her death."

"Odis?" Dr. Meg said while his hands rummaged around her ribcage with a pair of tongs.

"Yeah, yeah. A gold star for the one who never shuts up."

Hypher nudged her side. "It's never something simple, is it? You find a human like this and it's definitely sulfhemoglobinemia."

"No, no, no. After the vegetarian Sea King? It's definitely never simple. I'm sure there's oddly coloured humans out there, too."

"HAVE YOU IDIOTS NEVER LOOKED AROUND? THERE'S PEOPLE WITH BLUE AND PINK FUCKING HAIR!"

"One of my fake moms had green hair," Rill mused aloud.

"I was a vegetarian for a couple months when I was younger," Hypher said, returning back to the subject. "I cracked after my mom brought home pepperoni pizza one night."

Rill smiled as she watched the doctor withdraw fluid from the corpse using a giant needle. "We ate anything we could find. He denies it, but I'm pretty sure Ace once brought home dog meat. But my brothers always gave me extra helpings of blueberries. If I could, I'd survive on those little blue bulbs alone."

"What? Were you raised in the jungle?"

"Daadadada… sort of, I suppose. Tropical terrain, at least. I was raised by bandits," she said.

Hypher chuckled as though she told a joke; Rill allowed him to believe so.

The two of them silenced after another warning glare from Odis, and returned their focus to the autopsy. Even in a well-equipped lab, autopsies were never a hurried process, usually amounting to several hours. In a unique case like this, with so many odd happenings (the unofficial cause of death and blood discoloration), they needed to reserve even more time to properly inspect the body. Even after all was said and done, all of her fluids would require testing that couldn't be completed until they returned to a proper government lab.

It was why, when Dr. Megalodon was withdrawing fluid from her kidneys, they hadn't expected to recognize anything on sight alone.

Odin frowned as the lead doctor held up the needle directly beneath the light. "That's Kraken Breath," he murmured.

Rill reached forward with a gloved hand, clutching a vial between her finger tips, and the doctor poured a small sample midway up the tube. She watched the aqua-tinted poison whish around, the collection of silver flakes reflecting back like shards of diamond and steel.

"Now this is incredible," Dr. Meg mused brightly, his expression unfaltering despite their unusual circumstances. "Which of you care to explain to us as to why?"

Rill gave Hyper three seconds to respond before she started rambling off. "Kraken Breath is nearly impossible to determine unless specifically searched for. You need to drain all of the internal organs, test the blood for present neurotoxins and record their stages—more often than not, Kraken Breath eludes this due to its incredible ability to quickly evaporate from the system. While there are external signs of poisoning, they share many similarities with basic biological disturbances. Honestly, we shouldn't even be able to see this, were it not for her blood discoloration and the fact she was basically kept frozen—"

"It couldn't build enough energy to evaporate," Hypher finished for her.

Odis snorted, but the corner of his mouth rose, just a smidge. Rill smiled and turned her gaze to the lead Doctor.

"Was that satisfactory?" she asked earnestly. Her grip on the vile relented as Hypher took it away and stoppered it, but the Doctor didn't answer her, only continued removing organs, placing them in separate trays for further dissection. She frowned, thinking hard of what she was missing. Kraken Breath, Kraken Breath…

"Oh."

She turned to Odis, deciding it was his fault that she missed this last key point. He shouldn't have smiled. "And mermaids are immune to it, aren't they? Fishmen and mermaids."

Dr. Meg nodded just as she turned back to him. "Well done, Rill," he congratulated. "Regardless of the levels of kraiken braeth, no amount has the competence to pollute her bloodstream or neurons. Judging by its presence, however, she may have been a carrier."

Rill frowned. "A carrier?"

"The World Government's top boy," Odis interjected. "Dr. Vegapunk's always butting his nose into every little detail the sea can offer—"

"I know! His work is the leading resource of the world's inventions and technologies. Dr. Vegapunk is the greatest contribution to the scientific community in over 500—"

"DON'T PRAISE YOUR TEACHER'S RIVALS!"

"But it's true!" Rill insisted. "Nevermind his work on the Devil's Fruit and seastone, he's revolutionized simple home comforts. My grandfather told me Den Den Mushi weren't even useful until he discovered the right wave length for communi—"

A hand emerged from behind her, its fingers securing around her lips and cutting off her means of arguing. Reluctantly, she tiled her head back and scowled at Hypher's smirk.

"You were saying?" He turned to Odis, dismissing her glare. Rill thought for a moment how she could throw him through the walls of the ship, maybe even take off one of his arms and let the blood attract a Sea King, but the anger subsided under reason: those were more suited to the abilities of her brother's. At the very least, she could be passive aggressive towards him for the rest of their internship.

"Vegapunk's facility has outsourced carriers. They bring him rare and unknown items, poisons… anything that could generate a use above, and he rewards them with funds from the Government. The man buys his work; he doesn't search for it."

"Hm shh hhhnuh mmaaay uhhh eh hurr hihihihsh!"

Hypher drummed his fingers along the top of her head, inciting her disposal of patience when she bit down on his hand. Ignoring his startled yelp, she wiped away at her mouth with her sleeve. "He's still a remarkable scientist!" she said behind her arm. "You can't just hand someone something and expect them to draw a definite conclusion. He works with all the little pieces! Honestly, if we could've purchased a seastone-trimmed ship, our journey would be far simpler."

"I'm grateful for Dr. Vegapunk's work," Dr. Megalodon nodded. She noticed the drop in his tone, led by his absent smile as he funneled the Kraken Breath from the mermaid's corpse. "However… I wouldn't idealise his accomplishments so passionately, Rill. You're young, and your enthusiasm is refreshing for our team. I believe both you and Hypher will excel here. That said… remember to make your own observations and follow your intuition. Leaning on the words of your studies will blind your judgement. Out here, you have the basic knowledge required to understand what is happening; you must then draw your own conclusions as to what causes what we sense.

"For many scientists before our time, defying what we knew in search of possibilities drew just as many inventions and discoveries. Current medicine dawned on several mistakes, for instance. Be patient. Listen to your mentors, but remember to continue questioning their teaching."

Odis rolled his eyes. "You're gonna make her worse, pops."

The young woman sucked in a deep breath before shaking her head. "I… yeah. I understand. I'm sorry, Dr. Meg." She glanced behind her at Hyper, now propped against the wall of the ship. "You deserved worse," she told him far less kindly.

Whatever Hypher's retort—likely something witty and more sardonic than she was capable—was interrupted as the ship heaved to the side, knocking everyone, including their open corpse, to the floor just as Dr. Megalodon sealed the container of Kraken Breath. Rill caught it as it flew from his grip, in harmony with her head colliding into Hypher's hips. For a moment, nobody moved. The ship teetered dangled dangerously on its side, and though Rill's head ached, she lunged forward, shoving the jar of Kraken Breath into the front of her jacket.

"C'mon!" she shouted to the others. "We need to balance or it's going to capsize!"

Dr. Meg shook his head as he reached for his glasses, separated through the middle, with one leg still trapped around his ear and the other stuck beneath Odis' boot. Odis struggled to nurse a bloody nose, and Hypher was clutching his nether-regions, which Rill refused to linger on and instead tried to pull herself up the floor.

"Well, this isn't natural," the lead doctor said.

Odis groaned. "Fucking Raymond, what the hell did he do now?"

"Probably steered us into an iceberg," Hypher said.

"Should we check for damage?" Rill inquired, still trying to crawl onto the other side of the ship. She reached for one of the steel cupboards, hanging open from the abrupt incline, and used it to leverage herself up.

Odis wiped away the blood clinging to his upper lip, accepting the wad of paper towel Rill kicked his way and twisted a few little nubs to insert up his nostril. "Let's get up on the deck," he grunted, glaring over at Hypher's smile. "It might be storming outside, so put on your damn hoods. AND QUIT LOOKING AT MY DAMN NOSE!"

It took several minutes for the group to find their bearings first. While Rill suffered no considerable damage, Odis' nose wouldn't stop bleeding, forcing him to replace the nubs every minute. Dr. Megalodon struggled to stand, usually buckling to his knees after every step, and though Hyper finally conceded and heaved the small elderly over his shoulders, Rill could still see the wince along his face as he moved. Together, they all migrated slowly, with Rill's agility placing her at the head of the group. She was the first to crawl over the wall and out the door, and after helping Odis down, the two of them worked on the doctor and Hypher. As they reached the first set of stairs, the ones that would lead them to the hull that housed their bedrooms, the ship began to descend again, this time much slower and allowing them enough time to drop to the floor and avoid any further damage. As soon as they settled, Rill shoved on her hood, disposed her latex gloves to the floor and bound up both sets of stairs, putting her mittens on just as she reached the deck.

There wasn't a storm to greet her.

Facing her was a mountainous skull, dressed by two horns and covering the bow of an even greater ship. A series of metal objects braided together in what she could only assume were by some unnatural means had knocked over their mainmast, which must've been the cause of their earlier incline, as most of the seaboard was now destroyed and the giant pole nowhere in sight. A mist settled around her, obscuring most of her extended vision, but above her head, nearly gracing the touch of clouds, she could make out the faint outline of a grinning Jolly Roger. As tall, shadowed figures emerged from the foreign vessel, she stepped back towards the quarter deck, bracing her arm along the damaged railing.

"Who are they?" she whispered. Behind her, the rest of the group was still clambering up the stairs, but Raymond, Scout, and Isamu stood above her on the quarter deck, their figures hidden from her view.

"No idea," one of the men answered, his voice too low for her to make out. "Keep your mouth shut and your head down."

She knew better this time; this wasn't their first pirate attack, and as they ventured further away from the Calm Belts, they were sure to beckon more. Rill reached for the flap of her hood, dragging it down further, stopping only when it threatened to disrupt her line of vision. Odis's bald head was emerging from below when the pirates boarded.

Even against the mist, their distinctive colors blared through the haze. The middle man sported wild red hair that arched towards the skies like flames, lined by a set of studded, blue-tinted goggles; he was only the third tallest, and yet still seemed to tower over his crew as he stepped into view. Draped across his shoulders was a thick jacket, dragging all the way to the floor and sporting a purple fur trim. Spikes dressed along his shoulders, his legs heightened by a yellow leopard print, and Rill found him to be the mix of sophistication and wild boy rocker. The other three were nowhere near casual either—at his left stood a man with hair longer than even hers, blonde and descending all the way to his knees. He adorned a blue, white-striped mask, permeated with several holes but hiding any distinguishing features. While his height probably measured up to the incredible sizes of her fellow shipmates—Raymond was somewhere around 6'5-6'6 and the rest only a little shorter than that—it was the sight of two curved blades resting loosely in his hands that triggered her swallow. Quickly darting her eyes towards the remaining two, dressed too minimally for the vicious, snowy wind promised in this area, Rill was again left for a loss of speech. Their torsos were muscled, their faces withdrawn, and while one covered his chest with an oddly-fastened corset, the other rose as the tallest of the group, certainly gracing 7 feet and donning fishnets. All seemed undisturbed by the lower temperature.

By the time they were settled in the middle of the deck, Hypher—with Dr. Meg still draped over his shoulder—and Odis were joined at her sides.

"They don't look too destructive, do they?" the red-haired pirate mused. His mouth widened into a mile-long grin, baring teeth packaged by thin, scarlet lips, and Rill thought back to creepy dolls Noble children would play with in Goa Kingdom. Beside him, Goldilocks crossed his arms and hunched his hip against the metal contraption.

"Their mast has the World Government symbol. I wouldn't reserve judgement quite yet," he said.

"You're too right."

"We don't know what you're talking about," Raymond called from above. The enemy heads all shifted upwards.

"Is that so? 'Cause we've heard about a lot of ships disappearing, a lot of pirate faces, right after spotting a small ship off of the horizon. Not just one town, too; you've been a real piece of work in South Blue. Though I guess a shitty boat like this certainly works for masking a real threat."

Somebody snorted. "Nobody's threatening anyone." Rill realized it was Scout. "Nobody's masking anything. Look, kid, we're a gov—"

The masked man moved faster than even the trained eyes of the scientists—Rill arched her neck and stumbled forward to catch sight of his blonde hair as he moved behind Scout, and even faster than she could turn her head, he was back behind his captain, as though he never moved at all. Scout was silent, his words still lingering as her mentors scrambled to piece together what happened, and then the scream wretched through the air. Scout's right hand collapsed to the floor, blood spurting across the group collected on the lower deck, enticing surprised yelps from his peers, and an even more alarming cackle from the pirate captain. Rill grimaced as the blood soaked her hood, and just as she reached to remove it, a hand firmly gripped down on her head.

"Don't you dare, honey," Odis growled.

"It's Captain Kid," the captain roared, and for a moment, Rill wondered if he was mocking them.

"Eustass Kid…" Hypher confirmed through a strained whisper as he hunched his way forward, moving slowly so as not to attract the malevolent man's attention, but just enough that he kept Rill hidden from view.

"Does that mean anything?" Rill asked him.

Hypher winced as Scout continued to moan overhead. By the sounds of the struggle, someone was trying to unsuccessfully dress his wound. "He's a new pirate coming out of South Blue. I saw his bounty in the post office the other week when we were in Sakura Town… I'm pretty certain it was 45 million berries."

Rill's eyes widened. "Forty— what? He's not even on the Grand Line yet."

"Something tells me it's his next stop. This guy's fucking insane."

"Will the two of you shut up?" Odis hissed, emerging from her other side and completely blocking her gaze as he stood beside Hypher. Rill knew it was a sweet sentiment, but it bothered her to forfeit her ability to visually track their enemy's movements. She didn't have an acute sense of hearing to rely on, nothing exceeding following conversation with the current winds and Scout's agonized sobbing, and if anyone were to creep up behind her, she'd find herself a Rill-kabob. Against their resisting jerks, the young woman shoved her face between their shoulders, her eyes sweeping back to the crew, only to find the captain's gaze lingering on her face.

Oh, dear, she thought as he began to approach them. The men standing guard of her were already tense—so much so that Dr. Meg still hadn't offered a single word, nor had Hypher moved to set him down despite how she watched his shoulders tremble under the weak weight—but Rill understood their concerns: the fate of women captured on sea never reserved a happy ending.

" Hm? What're you shuffling around—" He demanded, and Odis' elbow went into her stomach, shoving her back a few steps; Rill wanted to shout how pointless it was, but figured any attempt on her end to deepen her voice would just be laughable at best. She was taken aback by the violent thrust that sent Hypher and his stowaway over her head and onto the upper deck, their bodies clambering into at least one of the men as there were a few too many swears she didn't think belonged to the lead doctor. But Rill's eyes readied on Eustass Kid, and she tried to keep her face blank, thinking of nothing but his pale complexion and envisioning a wall of white around her. Not of his threatening reach, nor Scout's suffering, or even the mermaid's carcass ripped open and discarded to the floor only a few feet below.

"Hello," the word slipped out, eluding her intended focus. She arched her neck to properly face him, carefully crossing her arms as Kid moved in front of her. "We're scientists—we have no weapons on board, if you disregard the scalpels, but it's important to note that we never abuse our medical utensils. None of us are Devil Fruit users, and they're all simplistically weak men. Please stop hurting my friends."

Kid stared at her for an uncountable moment, his grin unwavering before he shuffled out a snort. Rill frowned as he turned away from her, moving ahead to return to his crew members. "You think I care that you're a woman? Unless you feel like fucking my crew for a night or two, I have no reason to spare you."

"I do not."

"We might even let you swim back to shore. I've never seen much point in keeping one whore on board."

"Daadadadada," Rill hummed, her brows trembling as they kneaded together. He certainly knew how to insult diplomacy. "No, thank you," she said. "I'm preferential to the current murder arrangements. Unless you feel like disappearing. I've never seen much point in entertaining those who seek senseless violence."

Odis ducked his head into his hand. "Ohhhh, Rill."

But Kid raised his arm, as though to dismiss her, even if she thought she saw his smile tighten in the corners. "If you want to kill pirates, I don't really give as shit, but I've been on this sea long enough not to take my chances."

"WE'RE NOT KILLING PIRATES!" Scout sobbed from above, and Rill tried to swallow the ache in her dry throat. Someone hushed him and his cries muffled down again.

"For the love of gold," Odis ushered under his breath.

"I really liked our last pirate better," Rill told him, maintaining a monotonous tone. He glared and moved in front of her, his elbow digging into her side as he shoved her back a second time.

"Listen, Captain Kid—" Odis paused, running his hand over his hood while Rill angled herself behind him. "Collectively, we have about 9 million berries on board. It's all yours. We're only researchers out here, we haven't been attacking anyone. You can search the ship for all I care, but there's nothing here."

"Researchers, scientists; it's like they think I give a shit," Kid mused. He laughed as he settled onto a broken piece of the deck, lazily playing with a few scraps of metal and bolts in his hand. Rill watched the levitating pieces circle around his fingers, drawing her gaze back to the massive metallic contraption anchored before her, where odd mechanics from swords to broken ship pieces held together as though supported by invisible glue. A ring slid off his finger, slipping onto the next one as though carried by an invisible string, and Rill finally dotted the connection.

"Magnets."

Odis turned back to her. "What?"

She ignored him, maintaining her gaze on the tempered captain. "He's a Devil Fruit user."

"I swear, kid, you're a little slow on the upkeep."

"My name is—"

"Killer… why don't you paint the ship? That flag's beginning to bug me. If it's them, not them… last thing we need is any more government workers in this broken world."

"Sure," the masked man answered, extending his bloody blade forward.

"PLEASE!" Odis interrupted. "We're scientists, and two of 'em are just kids. If you need someone to fight, you can stake your fight with me, but leave my students the hell alone!"

Nobody made a sound apart from Scout's choked cries, and then the entire ship erupted at once. The blonde man, Killer, leapt forward at his untraceable speed, and the spot where Odis stood before her was replaced by pieces of him by the time she finished blinking, neatly sliced and left in a pile as though waiting for preservation.

Rill recalled the training her Grandfather embedded in her from her youth, the means of survival he had forced upon her, Ace, and Luffy. She dieted on bread and water under Dadan's care for months before she grew the courage to hunt on her own. Her resources for learning were limited unless she ventured into the city to buy more, and when she wasn't strong enough, muggers would rob her on her journey back home. But she learned it all—the hunting, the cooking, the manner to protect herself because Ace and Luffy were seldom around to offer their services, and she knew her body couldn't forget a punch or a kick, even if it was all very weak, just as surely as it never forgot a book, but still her body stood and refused to move. It was stifling in her hood; her entire body trembled as sweat painted her clothes to her joints and the blood of her teachers rained down on her. Lift your leg, charge, and kick, she repeated to herself. Kick what? Charge at whom? She couldn't see him. LIFT YOUR LEG, CHARGE, AND-

When Killer stabbed her, it wasn't through the chest, nor did he swipe away her head with a clean cut, like he managed to do with Odis, or Scout's hand, Rill later learned. She suffered an injury to her stomach that only required stitches, a blood transfusion, and an adjusted meal plan while her body healed. But as the blade carved around her belly, she could have sworn it felt like her intestines were ready to pour out and rope down to the deck floor. It was why she fell onto her back. On her back, she had more control from dying. The average human had 5.5 litres of blood—considering she was taller and a little thinner, she probably had 5.2, maybe even 5.0 L available to her. Dizziness would start to settle after only losing .5 L, and that's certainly where her head was at, lolling off to the side and unable to focus on the screams ruffling around her. Between 1.3 to 1.7 L lost, hypovolemic shock would settle, and if she didn't seek medical attention and a blood transfusion, between 1.8 to 2.2L, she would die.

Rill lost focus of everything that happened as she tried to keep count of how much blood she was losing. The jar of Kraken Breath weighed down on her chest, sloshing quietly against her heart pounding wildly against it, and Rill thought of the mermaid below, drawing the same conclusion she must have as she hemorrhaged to her death: what an untimely way to die.

* * *

The funeral opened on a warm day, witnessed by all of the friends and loved ones Odis had claimed over his years. A woman with bright red, curly hair sobbed into a handkerchief, later revealed to Rill as Odis' widow. She never knew he married—it hadn't been a question she thought to ask. His wife and parents sat in the first row of seats, the gathering arranged on a beach and faced by a small podium with the ocean's vastness resting on the horizon. The closest of his friends—again, more names she never heard and faces never described to her—swept the first two rows. Hats removed, shoulders sagged, heads bowed in mourning—Rill spent months on a boat with him, and never knew so much as a detail about his life or the people he shared it with. She wondered if the others had better manners to learn about him outside of his academic standing; she and her colleagues, even a few who hadn't been on board that day, dressed the third row in their own set of silence, where most people stared at them and whispered of the day they were commemorating.

Rill tried not to let it bother her.

Scout lost his right hand to the pirates, as well as his left leg. He told the group later that evening that he was retiring from the program, to live the rest of his days in an inland office, far away from pirates and field work. He barely stayed for the funeral, what with the nurses insisting he return to the hospital under the supervision of his doctors who were still trying to build him proper prosthetics (which he wouldn't have the opportunity to use for at least the next eight months). Raymond, whose throat was slit and couldn't actually speak, smiled at everyone who offered him their sympathies. The medical staff promised that as long as he followed their instructions, he would certainly have his voice again by the end of the new year. He, as well as Isamu and Dr. Megalodon and the two interns, were still signed in for the duration of their commitment.

Hypher was the only one of the group who wasn't stabbed, or sliced, or maimed, or lost blood of any kind. He suffered a blow to the back of his head that left him in a three day coma with apparent memory loss and slower motor skills. He was also instructed to remain in bed and forego the funeral of his teacher, but still sat beside Rill in the third row, occasionally leaning his side against hers. It bothered her and it didn't. She tried not to think about it when the priest prattled off on Odis' life, even if none of the words settled in her ears.

Besides maybe Rill, Isamu and Dr. Megalodon suffered the least. They both received slices to the chest, but their thick clothing provided enough of a barrier that the incisions were only child-play at best. After stitching each other up, they moved onto the rest of the party, including Rill who was bleeding out of her stomach and just staring up at the sky while she awaited her death. She couldn't recall being conscious during their care, but Isamu later told her that her eyes never closed as he sewed up her stomach and injected her with someone else's blood. The shock probably rattled her memories, he'd said.

Although, if the shock wished to be effective, it could've helped her forget watching Odis get carved apart before her eyes. She couldn't get that memory out of her head. It was almost funny that her mind chose to forget something as simple as surgery when she could no longer sleep because of what she realized was Odis' sacrifice.

And Odis' death.

Not many people approached her there, and for that, she was especially grateful. Nobody needed to hear her weak explanation of a sliced stomach and a big needle in her arm. Hypher, whose head was dressed in bandages, still had his fair share, and Rill stayed beside him with each question, because he didn't smile and nod them thanks like Raymond did, nor did he brush them away by switching the subject to Odis like their remaining teachers. Hypher returned with a flat "I'm fine" followed by an apology for their loss. Then he walked away, but not far enough that Rill couldn't catch up to him (he wasn't willing to have a nurse around to monitor him; Rill tried not to let the fact that he had elected her instead bother her as much as it did).

I'm so sorry for your loss she heard many others say that day, between Isamu, Dr. Megalodon, Scout, and many strangers she never spoke to. She willed the words to leave her mouth, willing her sorry to hold more force and merit than any sorry spoken before. She sorried for how Odis lost his life in the pile of survivors, how he guided her in her studies with his own brand of tough learning and she only argued or questioned his motives. I'm so sorry for your loss she tried in her head. I'm so sorry. It sounded just as stupid and contrived as any other apology.

After the sermon that Rill paid no attention, everyone was offered a feast provided by local eateries and the opportunity to enjoy Odis' lively spirit in a more proper fashion. For this, people cried less, and gossiped or relived stories at the expense of his friends and family, rather than the collection of his damaged co-workers.

Although not intentional, Rill and Hypher sat together with Scout and Raymond and Isamu while Dr. Megalodon joined Odis' widow for a private retelling of Odis' last moments.

"I don't know why someone would want to relive that," Hypher said as they watched them some twenty yards away. Rill could still make out the tears sliding down her cheeks.

Isamu ducked his head into the bottle of a strong liquor Rill couldn't identify. "You got me, junior."

"Maybe it doesn't feel real," Rill said. She picked at the small sample of blueberries on her plate, still refusing to bring any of them to her mouth. Hypher reached forward and took one in her stead, and after that, the group fell silent again. Eventually, Isamu and Raymond returned to the buffet table, and Scout rolled his way over to the bar, much to the chagrin of his two nurses.

When Dr. Megalodon returned to the table and Odis' widow made her way to the buffet, Rill quickly excused herself with a lie that she needed the facilities. It wasn't a necessary offering; it wouldn't change how she felt, or how his wife no longer had a husband, but Rill forced her feet ahead of one another and didn't stop until she had cut in front of one of the other patrons and stood beside the curly, red-haired woman.

A horrible lump formed in her throat: her red hair reminded her of Kid's, if only from its vivacious colour. Did Odis consider that before he died?

"I'm sorry for your pain," she blurted out. Odis' wife stared at her with a startled look, her eyebrows inclined towards her head and her mouth half-opened in a question, but Rill pressed on. "I wanted to apologize for Odis sacrificing himself for us, for the crew, but that would be very dishonourable. He was my teacher… my mentor, and he protected me from a violent fate. All of us from a violent fate. He directed the focus on him so we would suffer less. So I'm sorry for not taking action to protect him, like he did for me, and I promise—I swear to you, Mrs. Odis—that I'll never hesitate again. I am so sorry for your pain."

Rill didn't hear whatever Odis' wife answered. She stopped listening after the older woman clasped down on her hand and squeezed it, as though she had any right to be comforted. She said nothing as they shared a hug, and couldn't only offer a smile before someone else stole the widow's attention. Rill noticed nothing as she walked away, dispersing the crowds with no manners until she was out of sight from everyone.

* * *

"You'll never get better at socializing if you hide out over here."

There wasn't any hypothesis behind the speaker—Rill recognized Hypher's breezy tone, despite the social gathering requiring at least a more solemn lace. She nudged her head in the direction she thought he approached, only for his hand to come down on her shoulder from the opposite side. She really needed to improve her listening.

"I don't handle death well," Rill admitted as he sat down beside her on the cliff's edge. She quickly fixed the skirt of her black dress to at least cover her knees.

"Really?" Hypher said. "I haven't seen you cry once. You're doing a lot better than Raymond—he used the end of my shirt as a tissue. Look—" And Hypher extended his inappropriately brightly-striped shirt beneath her nose, pointing out a specific patch seemingly more weary than the rest. Rill pushed his hand away and turned her gaze to the ocean, calm and glistening like the silver shards of Kraken Breath that she managed to save in lieu of her dead comrade.

"That's not what I meant," she murmured to deaf ears. "And if we're going to discuss social conventions, you should know that at funerals, people wear black."

Hypher smiled at her. "You gotta take into account that Odis wasn't much for uniform. I think he'd be bored if he knew we all showed up looking the same."

For this, Rill ignored him and moved along.

"What do you think about that rumour? The one Captain Kid told us: that ships were disappearing from a small crew, with hardly any debris remaining? I mean, we can look towards the obvious: currents, storms, Sea Kings, another malignant pirate crew…" she rattled off.

"I haven't given it any thought," Hypher said, dropping his light-hearted tone into something much darker. "The prick was probably making it up."

"Maybe," Rill said.

"Does it matter?"

"Absolutely. Wouldn't it be better that Odis died because of a misunderstanding, than for absolutely nothing at all?"

"You think he died for nothing? They ripped apart his body—the rest of us are lucky we're even alive. If this had been a regular crew of people, we wouldn't be. I get that you haven't spent much time out at sea, but demons like that are everywhere… Pirates care nothing for the lives of civilians. They take and act on nothing but their own selfishness."

Rill swallowed as another lump wedged behind her throat. What did that mean for someone like Ace? Or Luffy, who had turned seventeen a mere month ago and was already out at sea, likely trying to collect a crew and sail for the Grand Line. She certainly couldn't acquaint them to the likes of Kid's actions, and whatever pirates were didn't require her own deductions. She wasn't a pirate, and if she slipped into prejudiced thinking, she wouldn't have much room in the scientific world. "Maybe it was a ghost ship," she continued on from before. "Maybe a Sea King was trailing it… and it attacked those who went to inspect the ship for survivors… They've very clever..."

"It's not that important, Rill."

"It cost Odis his life! Whatever happened, whatever reason—"

"We were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Hypher insisted. "It happens out at sea. Remember that kid from the North?"

She ignored that, too. "I keep thinking I should have attacked him."

Hypher's brows arched. "You think you could've taken down that pirate? And what about his super assassin sidekick? Or the other two monstrous guys."

"No," Rill said, shaking her head. "I couldn't have defeated them. I probably couldn't even scuff their boots. But I had the means to act… to think of something rather than just stand there! They were Devil Fruit users. We could have all jumped off ship and started a means of escape that way. I would only need one good kick… just to get him off guard and then—"

"Nobody asked you to fight for us. This is an academic program, not the Marines."

"Nobody asked, and nobody fought. That's why Odis died. He protected us, and we returned it with cowardice."

Hypher sighed. The two of them settled into silence and Rill thought of getting up to leave again, though it was poor manners of him not to leave first. This had been her peaceful hiding place that he'd unceremoniously intruded with talks they clearly couldn't agree on.

"Do you think they're going to shut down the program?" she found herself asking a few minutes later as she watched Hypher scratch at his head.

"I heard Isamu and Scout talking about it," he replied. "Dr. Megalodon's trying to reason with the university. I guess if they do throw us out, we could just look around for other researchers. Hell, maybe you could see if Vegapunk's team is up to anything."

"No. Dr. Vegapunk doesn't offer internships."

"But that's your dream, isn't it? Work your way to the top and get a position alongside him?"

Rill ignored him and returned her focus to the horizon, where a sky too blue revealed that not even the heavens would weep that day. Big gulps of waves crashed along the cliff's edge, amassing splashes that sprayed along her calves, and she restrained herself from diving off the edge. She reached for her hair, unfolding it from the bun and enjoying as the black strands of hair licked her back with the help of the shore's breeze.

"That's not my dream at all," she said. She sneaked a glance at Hypher, whose eyes were already trained on her. "I want to beat him. I want to learn all on my own, and set the world on a new path. Dr. Vegapunk doesn't know it yet, but I'm his greatest rival."

She waited for him to snicker, to offer up a string of explanations as to why it was foolish or impossible, and in her wait felt the rise of her temper swelling to the surface. But Hypher leant down, bringing his hand to gently pat the top of her head.

"Alright, then," he mused, his smile never wavering. "Then I guess we're not really rivals after all, huh?"

She ducked her head away at the sight of his smile. "I'm not fighting for the permanent internship slot," she admitted. "It's all yours in the end. I need to build credit beneath Dr. Meg and then earn a viable reputation in the eyes of the World Government. I don't mind conducting my own studies… This is all very temporary."

"It's gonna take years. It's a little temporary."

"Years and years," Rill agreed. "But what I mean is: if he tries to cut one of us, I'll just volunteer to leave. I don't mind spending the rest of my life researching on my own. This program is important, and I need it to remain for the experience, but I can't look at it with a sink or swim ideology. If this opportunity is over, I'm going to find another one."

Hypher chuckled, and she ripped up a fistful of grass and threw it onto his lap. "Hey now! Just promise me that when you're running the show back at HQ, you'll have a job offer for me."

She finally returned his smile, unwilling against the rise of her lips but happy nonetheless. "Sure. I'll make you the designated nurse."

Together, they erupted into the sort of laughter that ignites your sides and spares no reason but the very simple need to pass through tragedy with fortuitous joy, and though they were far from ear-shot of any other guests, Rill and Hypher cried into their hands until their laughs stole away their breaths and their backs sank into the grassy depths of the inclined cliff, too ruined to bear their shaking howls.

Sometime later, they rejoined the others for speeches and a musical tribute to Odis. Hypher fell asleep at the table after battling with a headache; Rill discovered she had reopened two of her stiches and whisked Isamu and one of Scout's nurses to a private tent under the incessant assurances that it wasn't "what you think".

If anything, Hypher's earlier statement sported a bit of truth: it was certainly the sort of resolution that would have amused their former teacher's memory.


	3. Chapter 2

_Hello Grandpa,_

_Hope you haven't abused random objects as you tried to open this letter. Please respect your surroundings—it's social etiquette to avoid disruptions whenever possible._

_I'm assuming you are well and busy. Luffy should be out at sea by now, though I haven't heard any news on him yet. I carry Ace's bounty on my clipboard; my shipmates enjoy it very much._

_Speaking of which, one of them was murdered this past week. Our program—and my future—is in jeopardy because of this. If you could please contact me by snail transponder, we are currently held in Pelican's Reef, in the care of the local Marine base._

_Thank you._

_Monkey D. Rill_

_"Riddle"_

**[Following the events of the Kid Pirates' assault.]**

The weight on her chest was gone when she woke up. The jar of Kraken Breath no longer rolled beside her heartbeat; now the organ drummed in uneven bursts, reminding her skin it was only a membrane as her beating organ clawed against her chest. Rill inhaled through her nose, engulfing a swallow of iron and peroxide, and winced from the burn erupting behind her nostrils. Below her shoulders, she couldn't feel a thing, and a moment later, as she tried to lift her fingers to her face, she realized she couldn't move either. A dull ring resounded in her skull, bouncing from one end to the other in her concentrated search for another sound: a faucet drip, the rocking of waves, the footsteps of a crewmate—or worse. Only the low ring echoed through her, and Rill understood: her body was hollow.

Maybe she should open her eyes, she decided. Start at the essentials and work forward.

Overhead, Rill welcomed darkness. Knowing that a visual aid wasn't going to improve her confusion, she toyed with the notion that maybe this was death. Rotting in limbo for all of eternity, an idea she never believed was even possible. The thoughts vanished as she frowned at the ceiling, the sky, whatever sheltered her view and ruined any approach of light. Arguably a room, considering a flicker of starlight would be eminent even during a New Moon cycle. But why couldn't she hear anything outside of her own body? Why couldn't she move—or feel? A burden settled in her mouth, but Rill tried to part her lips with a sound, only for internal darkness to sweep over her when nothing came out.

The next time she awoke, there was light.

"You're the best of the bunch and still cause more trouble than anyone else."

Rill tried to move her head, forgetting that she couldn't until the familiar frustration eased her attempts. She glared at the ceiling panels, or thought she did but her muscles were lax against her control, too slippery for her commands.

"Stop it, Rill," he ordered.

She ignored him and tried to recognize which room matched the overhead view. From what she could recall—and even under dire circumstances, it was quite a lot—this wasn't their ship. None of the rooms harboured white steel plating.

"Uhhhhh," she groaned, feeling her tongue slide over her bottom lip. Why couldn't she say anything?

"You've had a strong dose of benzodiazepine. If you can understand me, blink once."

Rill followed his direction, her heavy lids dropping swiftly though struggling as they reopened.

"Alright. You're not dead, got it? This ain't heaven or hell or whatever resting place you believe in."

Rill's focus filled with images of a gated cemetery, then a poorly painted urn.

"We're on a Marine ship, headed up to Pelican's Reef," he continued, "and you're fine. Your stitches are under control, for the most part. I couldn't tell if you were seizing or having a hellish nightmare, but you're bolted to the bed. When the drugs wear off, I'll untie you, got it?" He waited until she blinked, then finally moved into view. Rill gazed into Isamu's bearded face, his features shadowed by the golden glow behind his head. He smiled, but it was weary and led by crinkles that cascaded down his forehead; Isamu looked as though he'd aged seven years, and even the tendrils from his beard appeared thinner and coarse.

"You're alive. Hypher's… they're all alive. Everyone's okay," he tried to soothe her. His hand stroked her wrist, giving it a small squeeze as he pulled away.

Rill closed her eyes and the light shuttered away. A violent surge of nausea rose to her throat, but if it was the drugs or her own inability to vomit, she couldn't do anything to fight Odis' dismembered body shuddering into view. Odis' head gazing towards the destroyed seaboard, providing him with a direct line of the ocean as his brain hemorrhaged to death. His arms and legs neatly folded atop of one another, as though a child had gathered them as toys and planned to return to play with them. She couldn't recall his torso, or his midriff, or what had become of it, but the taste of iron filled her mouth. Rill recounted all the blood that sprayed around her, the bits she swallowed and the streams that showered her clothes before her own pain manifested. Had she even faced Killer as he sliced through her belly? All she remembered was Odis' body, incomplete and dead, and blood painted everywhere.

Paint the ship, Killer, that man had said. There was no pain from her memories.

If Isamu lied about Odis, how many more were dead? Dr. Meg wasn't able-bodied to begin with; try as he might to stubbornly retain his youth. If a jagged wound rendered her sedated and restrained, said cut could penetrate his organs or simply render him into two pieces. And what of her other teachers? Raymond was the largest—could that factor into a remarkable survival? There was Scout, who'd already lost his hand before the attack, and whose condition was unknown to her even before Odis was violently mutilated. Between him and Dr. Meg, she couldn't see any feasible means of their survival.

And then there was Hypher. A stupid boy who thought he was stronger than her because of a third limb descended between his legs, who shoved her away for her own good, only for Kid to throw him across the ship for curiosity's sake. Had he bothered to live?

If Isamu withheld information for the protection of her psychological welfare, she wondered at what point her smarts reduced her to frailty. When did Rill, raised by bandits and smarter than nearly every adult she'd met before leaving Foosha Village, earn the regards of a woman too vulnerable for the cruel wastes of the world. She'd lived them. She'd lost people before. She already knew Odis was dead, so why couldn't Isamu ignore his parched lips and move his tongue into words?

She couldn't ask, and he wouldn't feed her growing ache. Such helplessness surely hadn't surfaced since her days trapped under bandit rule.

With her struggle to mitigate nausea, she now required the means to slow her temper, as fighting against a drug-hazed body only promised to drain the remainder of her trifling energy. That Isamu would dismiss her need for accurate information was cruel, though; she indulged a brief fantasy of violent yelling the second her mouth could move without drenching her chin with drool. For now, she would play passive. At least she could feign illness as her cause.

The next time Isamu spoke, Rill made a point of peering at the panels above his head, ignoring all of his requests for her to blink. At last, when he disappeared from view and the sound of a lock clicked behind him, Rill arched her shoulders until she slid down a few inches, deciding it was as comfortable as she would get for now. Eventually, the drugs wore her down to another dreamless sleep.

It was impossibly dark when she awoke later, but Rill could move her fingers again, and they jerked to her head, dragging wires with them. She frowned, trying to inspect them through the dark, only to realise they weren't wires: they were cords. An IV was imbedded in her wrist, connected to a small pulley and likely hooked up to antibiotics. It was only as she followed the trail of the cords that she realized Isamu had removed her restraints.

Moving again brought Rill joy. Her toes wiggled the thin sheet wrapped around her until enough of it had loosened and she kicked it off her legs. That caused the first tether of pain in her stomach, and such a pain swelled right along her wound until she thought she might be sick—and then she was leaning over the bed actually vomiting sick until her pain spasms fought and won against her nausea. It was dizzying, battling both the pain and rhythmic impulses that came from side-effects, and she had no words to spare Isamu when he entered the room to bear witness to her struggle to contain herself.

"You look like shit," he greeted calmly.

She nodded, her head seizing as it dropped down. "I feel fine," she told him, "I probably jerked up too quickly."

"Don't move around too much, or your stitches will come out. He perforated your liver, but it wasn't anything detrimental—"

"It'll probably clot itself out," Rill finished.

"Yeah. In the meantime, stick to liquids. We need a medical doctor to properly examine you."

"No," she rushed out, "it's fine. I'm fine. I want to see the others."

A dense coolness settled between them; Rill trained her eyes on his face, wondering if he would shuffle out a second lie or finally surrender the truth she needed. The bearded man only grimaced and collapsed onto a stool, leaning his shoulder into the wall.

"Odis is dead."

"I know."

His expression never shifted. He scratched his beard aimlessly, distracting his eyes from her leering gaze. "Figured as much. We didn't see it, but… I imagine you had a clear view. You were drenched in his blood."

Rill glanced down at her clothes, only to note someone had changed them during her unconscious period. A cotton white tank-top and thick wooly pants replaced the worker's uniform and coat she had almost died in. "Is anyone else… hm. Did everyone else survive?"

"Yeah. For now, anyway. Hypher's in a coma, and Scout… Scout lost his leg, too. That bastard cut it off right at the femur—" He paused, but the young woman didn't offer him a wince or any form of acknowledgement. "Dr. Meg and I were cut on the chest, but…" Isamu jerked the front of his sweater over his head, revealing a thin incision crossing his pectorals. Stitches sealed the wound together, but Rill understood: it was a shallow cut.

"Raymond was worse off," her professor continued, bringing down his shirt. "His throat was slit. He can't talk, and we haven't really let him try. Everyone needs proper medical attention, but these Navy doctors are fucking useless. Meg and I know more than these morons."

That gauged a reaction from her. "We're on a Marine ship?"

"Yeah, we're heading to—HEY, I TOLD YOU THIS ALREADY!"

"Oh. I guess you did. Did they catch him? Captain… Kid?" she hurried along. It's Captain Kid, he'd shouted.

Isamu shook his head. "No. After their attack, we waited until they were aboard their ship before moving. They fired at us with a few cannonballs, but the ship was basically destroyed at that point. We had enough to stay afloat and stabilize the rest of you before sending out a distress call. My god, we were actually fucking lucky there."

Rill scrambled to piece her memories, trying to remember whether she heard cannon fire, but stopped every time Odis surfaced instead. Mutilated beyond repair; watching the ocean and trying to see his family in the soaring waves.

"I don't remember falling unconscious…"

"I couldn't tell if you were or not," Isamu admitted. "Meg took care of Scout, but I had to work on Raymond or he was gonna bleed out. I had no idea you were even injured until I pulled off your coat. You were drenched in a pool of Odis' blood… or maybe it was your own. Blood was everywhere, Rill. And you just laid there, wide-eyed and…"

He frowned, and Rill leaned forward on her elbows. "Did my heart stop?"

"No. You were still breathing. Guess you didn't have much blood left in you, though. When I finally got to you… you just laid there."

"…you said that. Is that bad?"

"And smiled."

Now it was her turn to gloom. "Hmm," she hummed. She didn't recall finding much to smile about as she observed her teacher's murder, or endured the swift attempt on her own life. She remembered… but she couldn't remember anything past Odis' attack. Not Killer's face, not his movements, not even falling backwards. "I smiled? What a strange thing to do."

"Shut up."

"I'm not mocking you," she sighed. "I don't know. It was probably euphoria adjusted from the adrenaline. Blood loss causes that, if I'm not mistaken. And I know I'm not."

"Shut up," Isamu repeated, this time rolling his eyes.

"I'm sorry for smiling," she said.

"DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR STUPID THINGS LIKE THAT! If anything, apologize for being a blazing idiot!"

"Oh. Sure. When was that?"

"JUST FORGET IT!" Isamu roared.

The raven-haired woman rolled onto her right side, momentarily shielding her face as she tested her range of pain. Still reeling, probably enough to buckle her knees if she rose too quickly, but Rill decided she would fight it regardless. It was a focus she learned from her grandfather that aided her as she rose to a sitting position and snapped her eyes shut while the rest of her face trained an unmoving expression. Broadcasting her agony would offer no merit under Isamu's scrutiny, and when she decided her head could pretend a calm, she shuffled her weight onto the pulley and carefully dropped her legs to the floor. Standing proved almost unbearable, and still Rill managed to stare vacantly at Isamu's watchful gaze while she tested the boundaries of her movement.

"Can you take me to Hypher?" she breezed out a moment later, ignoring the dizziness wrapped around her head that threatened to send her to the floor.

"You shouldn't be moving like that," he chided, and Rill straightened her back stubbornly.

"I can inspect all of the rooms if you don't feel like sharing."

Perhaps against his own reasoning, Isamu relented and led her—sluggishly—from her room and into the next one over where Hypher swallowed most of the space with three cots stringed together beneath his resting form. He didn't look paralyzed or comatose, if she ignored the fact that he was visibly unconscious. But the tanned blonde breathed deep, full breaths, and a lingering snore shuffled from his throat between them, and if anything, Hypher looked as any young man would while taking an afternoon nap. The IVs and catheter could be ignored, too.

"He needs a hospital, with doctors more experienced in this field. I'm weak on neuroscience."

There wasn't a point to Isamu defending himself, but Rill allowed him without any dissent on her end. She lowered into the seat adjacent to Hypher's bed, propping her elbows onto the mattress and peering into his face while he slept. She waited another moment before raising her middle- and fore-fingers in a circle, flicking him across the cheek.

"Yeah, we've tried that," Isamu said, rolling her eyes when Hypher failed to respond.

Rill sighed and leaned back in her seat, raising her knees to rest against her chest. She fidgeted on the plastic chair until the artificial cries bugged her into settling. A silent thunder roared in her stomach, and Rill could feel the blood leaking through from her careless struggle. "The longer he stays unconscious, the more likely he'll lose memory," she said, and from the look on Isamu's face, this was something he and Dr. Megalodon had already discussed. She bit into the nail of her thumb, trying to distract from the pain. "Did you inspect his spine?"

Again, Isamu rolled his eyes. "I get that you're worried," he started, and Rill quickly cut him off.

"Don't patronize me."

"Don't make obvious suggestions!"

"I DON'T WANT HIM TO BE IN A PERMANENT VEGETATIVE STATE IF HE WAKES UP!"

"IF WE JERK HIM AROUND AND HE DOES HAVE ANY NEURO DAMAGE, WE'LL ONLY MAKE IT WORSE! For god sakes, Rill, he needs a CT scan and honest-to-god professionals. Jostling him around will worsen his condition."

The two comrades glowered at one another, and Rill didn't wait for him to order her out of the room; she abandoned her seat, taking great care to shut the door quietly despite her instinct to carry out in rage. But in lieu of her desired grand exit, she stomped her way up to the deck, ignoring the sharp pangs along her incision and the armoured marines stationed outside of the stairs who shot her indecisive glares. Isamu was right, and in his rightness, listed all of the things Rill failed to consider in her burst of anger.

When she finally emerged, a warm breeze rustled her hair, the sun grinning shamelessly on her head. She swerved and spotted Dr. Megalodon up on the quarter deck, his face burrowed in a grimace as he talked to the crew's captain. Rill hastily shrugged off the Marine coat and dumped it on the outer railing before joining her professor. He caught sight of her just as she reached the upper deck, and finished off his conversation with the captain before she swindled out even a sentence. The two exchanged smiles and her arms unfolded to drag him forward in a hug.

"You're okay. You really look well," she murmured in his ear. Dr. Meg's hands rested on the middle of her back in a returning hold, their bodies remaining close until she finally yielded to his attempts to shrug her off.

"Oh," she commented as they broke apart. "You're not privy to physical contact, are you?"

"I'm a bit startled you are," he laughed.

Rill nodded. "I'm selective," she explained. "Family, friends… teachers who risk their life for my well-being."

Dr. Meg's smile softened as he reached for her shoulder, his weight far lighter than what she expected. How light were his bones under such a thin veil of flesh? "We're nearly at Pelican's Reef," he told her, and she nodded as though she understood.

"Okay." A moment paused. "Why?"

The lead doctor snorted softly from his nose. "Their—" he inclined his hand toward the back of the Marine captain "—base is located there. We also have a small dependent from the university available to us, and it's the town where Odis grew up."

No expression bloomed on her face. The doctor continued. "We have a lot to go through before this is all over. First things first is getting those three proper medical attention. Then we need Odis' body released for a funeral, and of course, I have a very long discussion with the faculty board. Our captain here lent us a communicator, but the signal's too choppy. We're currently on the Grand Line," he added, upon a flicker of confusion marking her face.

"We weren't anywhere near Pelican's Reef in South Blue," she said.

"I believe they were sorting out some means of confidentiality they're forbidden to share with us. At any rate, these are the men who saved us. Whatever had them passing within the vicinity of our distress call isn't something I'd worry about."

"So we're on a Calm Belt?"

Dr. Megalodon nodded. "We are."

"And our estimated arrival time—?"

"Just a few hours."

With nothing further to detain from him, Rill stretched her arms toward the sky, resisting the pain shooting through her abdomen and threatening to spread across her face. They were only stitches. None of her internal organs were damaged, aside from a brief scuttle with her liver. She had no reason to react to the pain, and so she swallowed it back until the throbs returned dull and manageable. When her arms lowered, the doctor offered another warning that she should rest longer, before he descended the steps she had climbed moments ago and disappeared below the deck.

Rill decided she would rest when Hypher woke up, and Raymond could talk, and Scout's cries no longer emerged from his room. Or maybe when the image of Odis could surface without the blame in her heart rendering her deaf and incomplete.

Until then, she would swallow it: the pain, the exhaustion, the fury emerging unfairly and without bias. Until the craving for all of it turned dull and manageable, until Rill could pretend it was only a blip in her schedule.

* * *

Only three people shared the limited space of the stuffy, narrowed, and poorly cleansed room. A square stool served as a makeshift table and three, plastic chairs carried their humble party. The cerulean blue walls irritated Rill's gaze, but the two men before her weren't easier to digest. She settled for glaring at the space where their shoulders brushed together, offering a compromise to her present torture.

"We've been over this seven times," she huffed, folding her arms over her small chest and arching her back along the seat. The base needed to install a window in there, or at least offer some air-conditioning and cushioned seating. "You're starting to irritate me, and I don't like it."

"Miss, every detail—"

"I'm aware," she said, "You've already said this. And I've told you, and I'm telling you again: I can't remember. It's called selective amnesia. It's a common derivative of hypovolemic shock. Although you remain committedly unaware, I had my stomach ripped open. I required a blood transfusion. I can show you the scar—it's pleasantly horrifying. Dr. Megalodon and Dr. Isamu can provide an accurate account—"

"And they've told us that you were the one beside Mr. Odis during his… his..."

"Mutilation," the other officer finished.

Rill scowled. "I don't see how that's relevant to your investigation! It was the assassin, Killer. Kid called him by name. From what I remember, Eustass Kid didn't even stretch his legs our way. And if he's already on the Grand Line, I'm sure the government has a heap of other nuisances to track. There's no point anymore." She paused before adding, "Dr. Odis is dead. He's a doctor, not a mister."

The Marines sighed. One of them, his short, black hair tied back in a clip, leaned forward with his hand outstretched. Rill stared back at it as though a flesh-eating parasite visibly circled his fingers. "The government is taking the death of one of their own as a direct threat against the establishment. Eustass 'Captain' Kid has already had his bounty raised—rest assured the Marines are considering him a priority," he tried to soothe her.

Rill returned his attempt at comfort with narrowed eyes and a jutted chin. "Politics don't offer assurance, especially led by a dictatorial regime. Don't be stupid. Dr. Odis is dead, and if Captain Kid shows any promise, your efforts are a waste of everyone's time. Notably, my own."

Her interview finished moments later, and before she fully opened the door back at HQ, Isamu was roaring in his familiar fashion to the same scolding he once shared between Scout and Odis whenever she breached their patience.

"You can't call the Marines stupid to their face. And don't insult the government—they record those interviews, Rill!"

In the rented office they temporarily deemed home, Rill perched her rear on Hypher's cheap desk, nodding off to his rant with about as much interest as she held any other reprimand. Hypher flung a small hacky-sack in the air, missing it on every third throw but still persistent to improve his hand-eye coordination. For the first time in weeks, his hair was reintroduced to its artificial spikes, stripping away the ailed ambience that had clung to him since their attack—even his clothes seemed familiar, the sort of fashion boys who wished upon the female gaze might wear. Both Dr. Megalodon and Raymond were missing from the room—the former speaking to the Marines (not necessarily on her behalf, although it wouldn't surprise her if he did offer another apology for the "rudeness" of his student), while the ladder remained in the hospital, his throat encased by bandages and his voice still stolen. Hypher had only escaped two days prior.

"Between the two of you, I'm gonna lose my head," Isamu continued.

"I am sorry," she tried the words around her tongue, smiling when he seemed to believe her. "I've never endured an investigative interview before. Their questions were repetitive and very much stupid, Isamu."

"Christ," he muttered under his breath. "I don't care about the way you interpret shit. Until you learn to make it through a conversation without offending someone—"

"Hey, hey. I don't find her that offensive," Hypher piped up.

"YOU SHUT UP!" Isamu roared. "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE RESTING IN THE HOSPITAL. YOU WERE IN A COMA, YA DAMNED IDIOT! IF THEY DON'T CLOSE THIS PROGRAM, YOU'LL BE DAMNED LUCKY THEY KEEP YOU IN IT."

Hypher, who'd listened to several reiterating variations of this lecture from both Rill and his doctors, continued throwing his hacky-sack as though Isamu had never bothered to address him.

"So we haven't received any confirmation from the board?" Rill hurried along.

Isamu turned back to her, his frown softened. "I wouldn't say that. They want us to disband, and for me, Raymond, and Meg to return to the university. The two of you…" His voice trailed off, but Rill and Hypher already understood. "Anyway," Isamu pursued, "Meg told him there wasn't a chance in hell that was happening, and now we're trying to figure out some sort of cooperative arrangement for all involved in this mess."

Hypher leaned up in his seat, stilling the ball in his grip. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Sure, you can make my life easier AND DO AS YOU'RE FUCKING TOLD!"

Rill frowned and skirted off the desk, moving until she faced the window. The university placing pressure on the lead doctor to terminate the program certainly didn't surprise her; it was a frivolous expedition requiring most of their brilliant minds at hand. And though Scout was among their local possession again, Odis was irretrievable. Hypher and herself were nothing short of a gamble, and in the last few months alone, Dr. Vegapunk's name continued sweeping across the newspapers, brandishing his accomplishments as though he was the only scientific mind left on the planet. The University's board members needed Dr. Megalodon back with his own slew of discoveries and inventions to impress the public. The World Government never shied away from boasting their favourite scientific mind, but it had been many, many years since Dr. Vegapunk associated with any sort of educational establishment. He was almost untouchable, and if anyone was considered a viable rival in their field, it was arguably Dr. Meg.

"Does this relate back to the grant, or are they just—?"

"No," Isamu interrupted her. "Yeah, they're never happy about throwing any sort of money down, but their main concern is all of us winding up like Odis. Or Scout—the guy's gonna need intensive therapy for the rest of his days." His frown returned as he finished, and she pretended to draw her gaze back to Hypher.

It raised another fair point: hardly any administrative force ever approved of fieldwork. From Rill's experience, they carried the notion that science should fall into your lap, not require study and actual search. Maybe that was why Dr. Vegapunk no longer indulged in fieldwork; perhaps his reputation had finally removed him from society altogether.

"I'd say it was a fluke, but we're in the time of the great new Pirate Age," Hypher mused from his seat. He'd dropped the hackey sack to the floor and now tried to balance on the back legs of his chair, tilting forward and leaning back in quick succession. "Pirate attacks can't be accounted for. I don't think they're even insurable."

"We're thinking about hiring some armed staff, but look at the size of Raymond. Even Odis. I'm not too thin myself." Isamu patted his abdomen as though the flesh should sink comically and accentuate a gut, but neither of the interns paid it much thought—it was hard to remain overweight in their line of work. After enduring the required labour and a slashed sleep schedule, meal times were often forgotten or ignored, only enjoyed when the body was too sparred to reject the rumbling any longer.

"You're mildly bulky," Rill agreed. "You could improve with a more protein-efficient diet and exercise."

Hypher laughed while Isamu glowered in return.

"Thank you, Dr. Rill," he said.

She ignored his quip and returned her attention to the university's demands. They feared repetition of their loss. The crew needed protection. "Daadadadada," she breezed. "It's not important."

"DON'T START MOUTHING OFF TO ME!"

"No," she said quickly, unfolding her arms and laying her palms flat in front of her. "I meant about the cooperative arrangement. If they're worried we'll be attacked again, the solution is rather simple."

"Sweetpea, we're not following," Hypher said.

"Don't call me that."

Isamu raised his hand as Hypher moved to interject again. "What the hell are you trying to get at?" he asked.

Rill thought carefully before she spoke.

"Marines. If we can't complete our research under our own supervision, then we should petition the government for a Marine escort. It would subtract from the threat of another pirate assault, especially if we encounter more Devil Fruit users."

Both men regarded her in silence. Rill envisioned her face as a blank sheet, repeating her proposal in her head a few more times. It didn't sound stupid, at least not under her scrutiny, but Isamu's scowl offered little assurance. Perhaps it was more ridiculous than feasible, she started to panic. If they couldn't appease the Council over in Mariejois, the board members would listen to no further pleas.

"I mean, it's a good idea," Hypher started, but his furrowed brows fed her doubt, "however… the government's kind of a bitch to reason with. It'll probably take weeks for them to get back to us, and that's just to say no. The university's still gonna rag on Dr. Meg until he folds."

"We should start now, then," she thought aloud. "Or we could go directly to the Marine base here and share the idea. They gathered up Odis' remains—there's little reason for them to refuse our urgency."

Hypher and Isamu both winced as she rushed out "remains"; Rill didn't bother trying to repress the memory of Odis' body stacked so neatly on the ship's floor. It was her only lasting memory after Killer carved through her stomach; it was her final memory of her teacher.

"If it was any one of us, we would all want this program to continue. What happened to Odis and Scout… I would feel very hateful if we couldn't at least finish it," she added more quietly.

Isamu's scowl finally surrendered. "Yeah," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I hear you. When Meg gets back, I'll go over it with him. The two of you need to keep your noses down in the meantime. No lipping off to the navy, no ignoring the requests of the medical doctors. Meaning you—" his finger indicated Hypher "—need to get back to the hospital. And bring this idiot with you—if she dislodges another one of her stitches, I'm gonna lose my fucking mind."

"They're fine," Rill said, but Hypher leapt to his feet and curved his arm around her shoulders.

"C'mon, we'll do lunch."

She grimaced. "You're touching me."

"Wait 'til you figure out what sex is," Hypher said, and she quickly threw his arm off of her as a red flare engulfed her cheeks.

"I KNOW EXACTLY HOW INTERCOUSE WORKS!" she shouted to the room. "I'm familiar with the slang and terminology and processes, so don't talk about it!"

"Quit bugging her and get out," Isamu told Hypher, undisturbed by her outburst.

The two of them conceded his request, albeit a trail of directive insults following behind them as they made their way down the hall. By the time they were out of the two-storey building, Rill's cheeks were a comfortable, rosey blush.

"You light up like a virgin," Hypher chuckled.

"You're invasive. And I'm not that either," she pointed out, only to realize seconds later that he was intentionally searching for a rise on her end.

"I'm well aware. Didn't you sleep with—"

"NO! I don't want to talk about any of this!"

"We could start with me if you're uncomfortable. I banged one of Scout's nurses after the funeral—"

"Of course you did. You're impolite. You shouldn't engage in that kind of behaviour during a mourning period."

"C'mon, Rill. I'm sure even you can draw some scientific conclusion as to why some people might like to keep themselves busy in the bedroom after a hellish day."

Rill almost took the second round of bait, but caught on to his attempt to further mock her. Reluctantly, she let the answer slide back down her throat and returned her attention to the street. Several shops and boutiques decorated the cobbled road, all boasting their own brands of delicious smells and inviting décor. "Where are we going for lunch? I can't even eat anything I like."

"You can have a milkshake," he suggested.

She glared at him. "Stop doing that."

"Fine, fine. But I don't know many girls who don't like milkshakes—"

"I don't like milk," she started. "Most of the world is meant to be lactose intolerant, and it's very inappropriate that we drink the breast milk of other mammals—"

"I know. I've heard it before. Please, stop."

The two continued bickering until they found an outdoor restaurant where their animated conversation barely fazed the other patrons. Hypher tried to disengage her temper, offering up a surrendering plea that he would never pry into her personal life again, and Rill shot him a dirty look in return.

"You pretend you're easy-going, but you're nothing short of trouble! Trouble and rude."

She wiped at a few errand crumbs on the placemat before sitting down across from him.

"Rude. Am I really so rude, Rill? Doesn't it make you feel a fire down there?"

"I hope you don't expect my company once you're readmitted."

"C'mon, what'll you do without me? Go hunt for another mermaid carcass?"

"The dead make better company than you," she shot back.

"That almost hurt. Nearly. I'd say this is the mark of your improvement."

"You're stupid."

"And then you take a slip back. Don't worry. You'll get the hang of it someday, nerd."

Rill reached for her cheeks, testing to see if their warmth was still out of ordinary. "If we do get an escort, I hope they send my grandfather, so he can squish you like a little bug."

"Rill, I doubt they're gonna send us a Vice Admiral."

"You're right. I'll contact him directly."

Hypher chose to ignore her as their pretty waitress arrived at the table. Rill spent the rest of her lunch break sucking back apple juice and chewing on ice-cubes while Hypher polished off a dry turkey sandwich and gave her a show on how to fake charisma. Later that afternoon, true to her warning, she sent her letter.

* * *

Following a week of silence, Rill and Hypher moped around the office. Dr. Megalodon had cheered at the proposition of requesting a Marine escort and wrote a diplomatic, pleading letter for the World Government that was promptly delivered. They'd received a confirmation call through the transponder snail, where a thick-accented representative from Mariejois assured them that the lead council members received their request. At further insistence, the local base issued their own report on the savage murder and assault upon their merry crew, but still the days ticked away in silence. Rill had heard nothing from her grandfather, and wasn't brave enough to attempt a second letter. The two interns switched between exasperation and open disdain for the government they were now depending on for not only their safety, but the assurance their program would live on.

By the eighth day, mercy was shrivelled and sparse.

"Let's march down there," Hypher suggested once Isamu left the room, leaving the two trainees alone. Rill bobbed her head in a nod as she doodled aimlessly on a fresh sheet of paper propped against her knee.

"There's nothing to accomplish here," she yawned into her palm. "My brain's starting to rot. Soon I'll be thinking on your trivial level."

"Ha," he aired out, absently flicking up his middle finger, then tucking it away when she never looked. "Then let's do it. We'll march down: between my wit and your wasteful presence, we're bound to make an impression."

"Or," Rill said, "they'll throw us out. And if we're too aggressive with our point, they could arrest us. I have a valued" –Hypher shuffled out a snort— "reputation with the marines. My Grandfather would be furious if he learned I was arrested." Hypher waited a moment, wondering if she was simply late digesting his last comment. When her crouched form never lifted, he deliberated in silence. She snuck a quick glance at her drawing, only to recognize what her subconscious was trying to bring forward. The paper quickly disappeared beneath her fist.

"It's not like we're a big group, y'know? There's Dr. Meg, Isamu, Raymond, you, me, aaaaaaand—"

"The nurse."

"Maybe the nurse," Hypher corrected. "The government needs to make a decision before she decides to join or not."

"So we wait," Rill said, and they fell quiet once again.

They waited for two weeks. Hypher claimed it was closer to four, but Rill fought against his embellishments, remembering Odis every time one soared up her throat. She was certainly quieter over the fortnight, reduced to exercising her mind with local trivia and childish assignments from Dr. Megalodon. Isamu and Hypher pooled their time training in the Marine gym, earning tips from Lieutenants while they tried not to overstay their welcome. In the evenings, they could be found lounging in one of the local taverns, drunkenly informing everyone who'd listen to their courageous expats at sea of all their hardships and adventures, until someone eventually caught on that they were nothing more than "fish doctors". ("The least they could call us is fish scientists," Hypher sulked about this later.)

It was right before they learned the news of their fate that Rill huddled with him on the edge of her bed, her legs bare and unshaven and presently hidden by a large, leather-bound text book. Hypher rested his back along the wall, his own legs bunched up against his chest while he craned his head over her shoulder, struggling to follow the paragraphs against the faster stream of her eyes.

"I'm sorry your weak ploys fell through," she murmured, lurching forward as she readjusted her hips. Hypher was the first boy she'd allowed to sit in her bed without any intentions of him spending the night, and the thoughts didn't stray sexually, either. Even Ace and Luffy, and during a very long time ago, Sabo, had joined her in her sheets when the weather was peaky and the bandits had hoarded all the blankets. For years, Luffy continued sharing her bed until he grew too big that she'd had no choice but to take the floor, lest the trail of drool he left on her arm each morning eventually engrave. Hypher probably didn't drool, and now that they were friends or something, he wasn't too hard to talk to anymore, but she still considered a safe measure of distance in their whatevership.

"Sorrys are meant to mean something."

"They say that about sex, too. I've yet to see any proof."

The spikey blonde grinned. "Cold—while cute on you—is hardly believable at this point." He waited a moment, then slammed his hand across her back. Rill lunged a second time, digging her fingers into the bed frame to keep herself from falling.

"Know what you are?" Hypher asked before she could shout at him. She steadied her position on the bed before turning to watch the end of his rhetorical question. "Lackadaisical!"

"How inquisitive. Enlightening. I'm so impressed you picked up a dictionary today."

An interruption from outside paused Hypher's retort. Their heads swerved towards the door, unfazed when it burst open and the tiny Dr. Megalodon shoved through.

"Students!" he cried, and stumbled onto his knees before either Rill or Hypher could warn him about the raised threshold. Rill slid down from the mattress, meeting the doctor in a crouch as she brought him back to his feet.

"I'm gonna place a wild bet of 100, 000, 000 bellies that the government responded," her blonde companion said.

The wispy doctor chuckled. "A fool bets away his money. Correct, though; I'm delighted your perception hasn't weakened over the past couple weeks.'

The corner of Rill's mouth twitched. "What did they decide?"

"Follow me, follow me," he replied, waving his hands eagerly as he rushed out of the room, this time narrowly missing the threshold. The students followed him until they were in the office, only two lanterns lit to illuminate the dreary room. To no one's surprise, Isamu lounged at his desk, his head dangling off his arm as he struggled to stay awake. But Raymond was also there, seated to his companion's left and boasting a weary smile. The bandages still stretched across his throat told Rill he was still unable to speak, and so she only offered him a wave.

"Your patience is much appreciated, as always," the small doctor began. He paused for Rill and Hypher to settle onto stools before launching into the letter's decision.

"The government has reviewed our case. They responded last week, in a first letter."

"A first letter?" Isamu crowed. "Why the hell didn't you say anything?"

Dr. Meg shook his head, the white wisps of hair waving energetically. "It was a refusal, my dear man! A rejection, and a very condescending tone. The council hardly has cares for the study of the sea, on matters of the Grand Line or elsewhere. I was still processing how to kindly disappoint all of you when I received a call from a Vice Admiral Garp! He received a letter from his granddaughter, a Monkey D. Rill I'm sure we've all seen once or twice—"

Rill avoided the sets of eyes swirling to her and bit away the smile trying to climb her lips. It didn't stop Hypher from gently pinching her side.

"Vice Admiral Garp assured me that he would take the matter back to the council and respond with a formal letter within the week. This week. This letter!" He raised the perforated envelope above his head, reminding Rill of her brothers when they would boast the largest hunt of the day. This time, her smile came more freely.

"Well, geez, if they refused The Fist—" Isamu started.

"No, no, no. Of course they relented. Familial ties are powerful. I think we can all learn from that, so thank you, Miss Monkey."

She nodded. Then, "Miss Rill still sounds nicer."

For once, she heard Isamu's chuckle rather than a aggressive tone.

"Hush, hush1 Our marine escort is a captain over in East Blue and—ah! My apologies—originally stationed in East Blue. Presently on the Grand Line and will meet us here within 72 hours. We are to greet the ship at dawn, load, and depart. There're rules, many rules, regarding this escort; some from the Council and those that the captain will issue of their own accord!" Behind the letter, Dr. Meg's crinkled face beamed at them, but Isamu still rose to protest.

"Sounds like the start of a heaping mess of—"

"True, true," the aged doctor interrupted. "Our freedom will be restricted, so it's important to promote good ties between us and the navy. Expect the first weeks to be a strain on our research. We're not to hinder their search or duties, and in return, they've offered us accommodation."

Hypher's brows lowered. "Suppose we find another mermaid carcass and they refuse to anchor?"

Dr. Meg shrugged his shoulders, and Rill nodded. "It's the safest option we have," she said.

"If we'd like to avoid another incident that cost us two of our crew, it is," he agreed.

As Dr. Meg poured through the rest of the letter, the tension restraining her joints began to dissipate. Rill eased her legs into a gentle fold, trying to follow along the tedious demands of the Council. "Under no circumstance may your crew or individual persons disrupt the tasks and commands of the World Government's military officers, crew, or allies" and, her personal favourite "under no circumstance may your crew or individual persons engage, shelter, bargain, or enjoy the company of pirates and their aiders." Had the council deemed them intellectually rattled and cited the very laws they were expected to uphold outside of their expedition? Under duress, she wouldn't promise such words. Odis hadn't—he'd bargained for their life, offering his meagre wealth in the hopes to send the Kid Pirates onward.

"Redundant, ain't it?" Hypher said, drawing her away from the dark room in her mind, where its doors lay unhinged before the entrance and the guilt toyed over the threshold, seeping through like baited lines.

"Suffocating," she aired out.

Forty-eight hours later, the Marines arrived at Pelican's Reef.

* * *

A downcast sky trailed behind the beastly hull of the Marine ship. Rill and crew waited, their equipment packed and their personal belongings slim to none. Each of them had shed their clothes and possessions until everything of severe importance could fit into individual, medium-sized drawsting bags. Rill discarded all but her uniform in the hopes of bringing two extra sets of shoes, seven sets of socks and underwear, her journal, the bounty of her older brother, several photographs of home, aromatherapy candles, and two choice textbooks donated by a mentor from her youth. The bag bulged noisily from her shoulder, creeping out from her like an aggressive tumour, and Hypher had mentioned several times that morning that she wouldn't impress anyone with a university shirt stained with fish guts.

When the ship docked, uniformed Navy officers flooded out from a wooden ramp in two neat rows, their eyes hardly addressing their newest attendants as they headed for markets, shops, and presumably the local Marine base. Dr. Megalodon craned his neck, muttering in his animated tone that the captain should be here somewhere, and then she was. A young woman only a few years older than Rill beamed at them from the top of the accommodation ladder. She beckoned them up, away from the scurrying crew, and together, they lugged eight sets of trunks onto their new home.

On deck, Marine officers were mopping the floors, drawing the masts, and dividing up provisions for the coming journey. The captain ushered them far from anyone's way and offered her hand to Dr. Megalodon.

"Hi, it's very nice to meet all of you! I'm Tashigi, and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!"

"I can think of one right off the top of my head," Hypher muttered into Rill's ear.

"It's not appropriate to solicit sexual services upon an initial meeting, Hypher," she whispered back.

Isamu struggled through a cough as he quickly shoved his way in front of the interns. "Thank you, Captain Tashigi. We appreciate you going out of your way to accommodate our crew."

"Oh, uhm, no. I'm not the captain, sir. I'm just a petty officer. Er, Master Chief Petty Officer! Captain Smoker is—he'll be with us soon, I'm sure. Please, make yourselves at home!"

Tashigi's welcome was kind enough, and because she wasn't the pinnacle of brilliance, Rill grabbed onto Hypher's hand and led him away before he could make any further advances on her. "She's nice," she tried to reason with him as they were led down into the hull's halls. An officer quickly explained that because of the size of the Marine crew, only three rooms were available for their six-membered party. The four men would need to adjust to sharing a space only a few square-inches larger than a closet; Rill and Nora, Raymond's nurse, were more fortunate, being the only females. The last room, and the largest available, would house their equipment and serve as a mobile laboratory. The vessel served as more than just housing, so Hypher and Rill swallowed any complaint that came to mind about their unfortunate sleeping arrangements.

Their program was continuing; she'd sleep on a dinghy if they commanded it.

"I'll help Isamu and them load the equipment," Hypher said, after dropping his rucksack onto one of the four hammocks. Rill quickly peeked into her room from across the hall, noting that there were two small cots bolted to the wall, one above the other. She quickly claimed the top bunk with her bag.

"Okay. I'm going to search for a water closet."

"You can just call it a bathroom, Rill."

"Water closet sounds neater."

He wasted no breaths arguing with her, quickly traversing up the stairs. Rill continued down the hall, peering into open bedrooms where Marine officers were sleeping, changing, or playing cards. A few of them balked at her as she walked by, and she offered them a small wave, forgetting each time she passed to ask someone for proper directions.

Unlike their previous vessel, the Marines could afford a properly-fashioned ship. She already knew the bottom of the ship was layered with seastone, but even the walls of the ship were properly fashioned with steel, rather than wood. The hallways were properly lit with electric lights instead of relying on lanterns, and painted white, providing a much lighter, even safer ambiance. It was probably because of these provisions that as Rill made her way further down, she noticed a fog settling around her.

Not a fog, she realized as she sniffed the air. Smoke.

What luck. Their proposal is granted by the World Government and the first Marine ship they board catches fire. While half of her drew the conclusion to return to the surface, or at least the officer's rooms and alert them of the situation, she peered over a corner, where the smokey haze flooded the narrow path. The thick of it poured through the bottom of an unmarked room, collecting in a slow rise that extended beyond her vision. What if someone was trapped inside? Smoke asphyxiation was the common occurrence of death during fires.

Pulling her shirt over her mouth, Rill crept towards the door on her knees. When she reached it, she used the back of her hand to feel for heat against the brass knob. There was none. Frowning, she threw it open, shielding her eyes in preparation for some form of fiery impact.

"What the hell?"

Rill lowered her arm. Smoke smothered the room, swallowing most of her detailed vision but not enough to hide the source, deriving from two cigars propped upon a man's bottom lip. Even in her stunned silence, Rill dismissed the possibility of them causing this much exhaust. The air was too thick for her to breathe in, reminding her of the steam from natural hotsprings or a man-made sauna—except there was nothing toxic about those. It was a fair minute before she drank the image of the man before her, and then, she swallowed hard.

He wasn't naked, but fooled her well enough from the sheer mass of his exposed torso. Ripples of muscle curved along his body, following all the way to his stomach where the largest set of carved abs she'd ever witnessed stared bluntly back.

"You're not on fire," Rill noted, jerking her shirt down from her mouth. "Were you rock balancing?" she continued distractedly, indicating the pile of rocks toppled before him.

The man continued staring at her, his scowl far more intimidating than that of her teachers, or even Ace, and Rill resorted to a blank gaze in her nervousness. It was the sort of scowl she watched authoritative figures use on her growing up, from her Grandfather during training to the local sheriff when Ace and Luffy wreaked havoc around the island. But this man wasn't her grandfather, and she wasn't a little girl, and so she forced a smile back, not because she was particularly happy or even brave, but because frowning would issue him control he clearly commanded.

His fist released the remaining rock onto the resting pile and he rose to his feet, moving over to the small, circular window. He didn't shift his gaze from her as he opened it and the haze began to dissipate.

"Let me guess: you're part of the government crew."

"I am," Rill agreed, meeting his eyes as her lips fought to stay upturned. Red eyes—she'd never seen such vivid discoloration outside of a textbook, or since the mermaid. "And you're Captain Smoker?"

"Yeah."

Of course he was. Centuries of scientific development led her to this moment where she could properly deduce a few basic observations and properly identify a half-naked Marine officer.

"You thought I was on fire?"

Rill held her blank stare, wondering if he was about to issue a joke. "…the smoke," she tried to explain.

"So your first instinct was to open the door instead of finding an officer."

She nodded.

"You gonna go?" he asked, upon realizing that she wasn't.

"Oh. I can do that. Or… do you know where the water closets are?"

His brows didn't quirk at her odd terminology, but he finally broke his stare, momentarily shutting his eyes and training them back on the rock pile when they opened again.

"The heads are on the other side of the ship. You need to go back towards the bow."

Rill nodded and rose to her feet. She watched Captain Smoker adjust his cigars in the corner of his mouth, and wondered the current state of his lungs if he was going through two of them at a time. Everyone in her anatomy class had jeered when her professor unearthed a rotten, charcoal lung from an ice box and placed it on her desk. "This is a consequence of pleasure," he'd warned them, and gave her an undeserved leer as though she'd brought a cigarette to her mouth in that very classroom. But Smoker's voice wasn't nearly as gravelly as it should be, instead carrying a gruff edge that was filling.

"I don't like public hygienic facilities. Is it possible to use yours?"

Smoker's head came up a second time. He had the same expression, possibly grimmer given his petulant disposition, that many people wore before him whenever she unearthed an outlandish question. Rill wondered if she should explain that she was particular about where she did her business; she was far more comfortable peeing behind a tree than stepping into a room pasted with bacteria—and a room frequented by untidy men. Nature was far less dirty than anywhere humans inhabited.

"…that was inappropriate to ask, wasn't it?"

The captain blew smoke in reply.

"I don't read silence very well. Are you staring at me because you don't want me to use your water closet?"

"It's called a head," he answered.

"That's ridiculous," she said, dismissing the term head, "I have a bladder reaching very full capacity, and the council's letter stated that if we missed the ship's departure, you won't return to collect us, so I don't feel comfortable running out into the streets searching for a private facility—"

"Shut up," Smoker said, and she paused, watching as he approached her with towering height and thundering footsteps. "Having to tow a bunch of government workers on my ship when I'm in the middle of a chase wasn't something I agreed to."

He was big, Rill thought as he engulfed her size by a clear foot. She switched her gaze from his red hues to the thick cigars still clinging to his lips.

"You're extra baggage. Your job here is to stay out of my sight, and not cause any god-damn interruptions. That was the deal. I don't care what the hell you prefer—get off my ship if you don't like it."

Silence echoed between them. The smoke from his cigars casually probed her nose while they watched each other, and Rill leaned forward, buckling her brows under his scrutiny. Luffy often said her eyebrows reminded him of caterpillars, not because they were very thick, but because they were always animated, no matter what she was feeling. Under the dense light of the room, Smoker had makeshift eyebrows one would definitely call caterpillars, too. Opaque, shadowed, makeshift brows above salient hues.

"That's a no, then, correct?"

Against her ribcage, her heart started pushing and shoving, as though breaking through her chest might ease her stresses. Why were people fundamentally impossible to cooperate? She slipped her hands down her stomach, carefully avoiding the healing wound running across her abdomen. His eyes followed her trail, which only encouraged the collection of sweat gathering along her palms as his gaze followed her.

"I meant it kindly," she told him, dropping her voice in the hopes her words would appear less blunt. "My social integration needs improving." Raymond's words, from when he could still speak them. "But I'm happy to be aboard your ship! You certainly look formidable against any violent pirates we might encounter. That's assuring, given our history. I bet you could use Kid's stupid hair as a hefty mop."

Smoker's caterpillars wiggled as his glare dissipated. He closed his eyes and snorted. "I'm not going after Kid."

"Hm. You're not?"

"No."

"Okay," she said. When his eyes opened again, she gazed over his shoulder, where the window captured the busying port. "I don't think this is entirely relevant to you, but I was comfortable with the idea of never seeing him again."

The same could be said of ever holding another private discussion with the Marine captain.

Smoker loomed above her and watched her gaze, waiting for her to interrupt in another ramble. "The captain's head is two doors down," he said at last, nudging his head towards her right. "I don't want all six of you using it, so keep it to yourself."

Rill beamed at him. It was a rare smile she didn't have to fake, the sort reserved for genuine moments, like a captain granting access to his private bathroom. "I'll regard it with vigor secrecy!"

"Right," he dismissed, pinching his eyes closed as he headed back to his seat a second time. Rill waited until he was settled before she began to close the door behind her.

"Thank you, captain," she called out to him, catching sight of his hand reaching for a rock just before it shut.


	4. Chapter 3

"Yo, brainiac! You see the captain yet?" Hypher asked when she emerged from the hull some hours later. Rill sat across from him along the seaboard, resting her rear on a crate of apples, and watched the raucous assembly unfold. The ship had already left port, and the Marines bustled noisily around the deck, yelling orders and condensed lectures from their captain. Isamu, Raymond, and Dr. Megalodon were huddled over on the quarter deck, seated at a small table.

"He's very nice, isn't he?" she said, scanning across the layers of decks until she spotted his massive form by the petite Tashigi, his back now covered by a thick Marine jacket bearing the Justice kanji. "Even if he does carry a sully disposition, but that only beckons the aged proverb "don't judge a book by its cover"."

"Those, uh, weren't the words I was gonna pick," Hypher mused. Her head snapped back to him, just in time to catch a knowing smirk settling on his lips.

"No," she dismissed, "you're exasperating."

"You better not be crushing, Rill. I miss when you crushed on me."

"I never crushed on you. Your level of attractiveness made me uncomfortable. And I'm not crushing on Smoker—he provided me with a favour when I misinterpreted him as angry. I don't know how I'm supposed to improve my interactions when they often lead to misunderstandings on my end."

Hypher rolled his shoulders, lazily stretching his legs before depositing them across her lap. Rill grimaced at the sight of his mud-caked shoes.

"Hypher—"

"It all comes down to practice," Hypher explained. "You're not nearly as bad as you were at the beginning of this. Honestly, I wish we'd gone to class together at the university."

"I wasn't very sociable then, either," Rill commented, turning away from his face and hoping the effect would work on her surfacing memories.

"Except with—"

" _Yes_ ," she bit the word vengefully, "except with him."

"Hmm," Hypher drawled out. Rill waited until he was looking her way before she made a point of rolling her eyes. He brushed her off with a laugh. "Once you pick up some slang and offer better conversation than arguments, you'll find people easier to deal with."

"I've learned to tolerate you," she pointed out.

"That's because I'm bored. Desperation sets in when you're surrounded by nothing but agitated professors. I need a wing man."

Frowning, Rill leaned her head to the side. "I thought I was your friend?"

"Whatever we wanna call it. Anyway," he switched subjects, much like Hypher did whenever they skipped over points he was earnest to make. "Smoker's a bit of a dick, ain't he?"

Rill, who shared maybe five minutes with the Marine captain, found such an early assessment exhausting. "I'm almost certain that word is the opposite of nice."

"Yeah, he did you a favor. Did he give you your own room?"

"No. He thinks we're invasive," she said. It was a truth that escaped his prying; she remembered Smoker's brief vent, citing how he was after someone, someone clearly more significant than a rookie punk like Kid. None of it earned her surprise. Venturing across the Grand Line where pirates of higher prominence and strength ravaged the sea hardly made Captain Kid and his entourage seem important, not when their bounties were only months old. Hardly, except it was his intemperate crew who'd left her on the brink of death. "He must feel like… a babysitter."

"I don't really care how he feels. The guy looks like he should be raising his own Jolly Roger. Isamu made me ask him about our course schedule, and he actually told me to fuck off."

" _What?_ "

"Well, he said piss off. I'm sure he wanted to say fuck off."

Rill shook her head. "Hypher, stop gossiping. You're starting to unsettle my patience."

"You're the one who left her crush on me for that."

"Just because I think someone's nice doesn't mean I constitute them as a crush. I never crushed on Raymond or Odis."

"You found them nice?"

"Well," Rill mused, "I thought Odis was very nurturing, and as violent as Raymond could be whilst making a point, he willfully cared about us."

Hypher stared at her with a mixture of bemusement and exasperation switching on his face. "No," he dismissed airily. "If anyone showed even a thick of kindness, it was Scout."

"For you. He wasn't fond of me."

"Couldn't blame him. You're too fucking smart. If you didn't have such an ego, I'd have to resort to scheming to throw you out of this program."

"HYPHER!"

"I'm kidding! Sorta. I like you, Rill. We're friends now, aren't we?"

It was one of the few questions she refused to dignify with an answer.

* * *

In the hours of the early morning while her crew slept, Rill used the night duty Marines as practice for improving her social skills. Most of the men were arrogant, some of them lewd, and all were so exceptionally foolish that she found herself craving the sarcastic wit of Hypher by the time he rolled out of bed after eight hours of undisturbed rest. Some nights she enjoyed the soldiers a little more, when their stories focused on the mind-numbing achievements of their superiors rather than the simplistic nature of their own: the ones where great battles were fought and Shichibukai shouldered by in their indisputable helms. Tales that carried the same fantastical notes as a children's book, but convincing enough to trick Rill into believing them.

Nora's snore pulled Rill from her dreamless sleep. She looked at her watch instinctively, catching the glass surface on a break of moonlight sneaking through the window. The hands marked a little past three—she'd managed two hours of rest that night. Rill stalled pulling herself out of bed, wondering if her will was coaxing enough to send her back into a shadowed nap, but Nora's snore drummed on, and the moonlight shined brighter under her awareness; eventually, Rill rolled in the flag. She shuffled off the cot, angling her legs to avoid the nurse's scattered form on the lower bunk, and tip-toed out of the room, leaving the door only slightly ajar. She managed up the stairs without seeing anyone, though a few slumbering crew-men greeted her when she reached the deck.

The moonlight illuminated the ship, but all manufactured lights were turned off or removed. While the seastone keel protected them for the most part, flickering lights would surely summon Sea Kings in the middle of the night. Rill had yet to encounter one since they entered the Calm Belt, and the peaceful waves in the night were too unsettling to lull her to sleep.

"Oh, dear. I hope I didn't wake you!" someone called from above.

The raven-haired girl turned and watched the petty officer trip down the stairs in her eagerness to greet her. Tashigi rolled off her clumsy decline from the quarter deck, narrowly flinging herself over the edge of the ship in the process, until Rill's reach peeled her off the banister.

"You have poor footing," she told Tashigi, who laughed in return.

"It's these stupid glasses! Half of the time I forget where I've placed them. It's not so easy to read with them by candlelight, and even worse with only this." She pointed towards the open sky, where the moon dangled high above them and cast jagged shadows across every surface it touched. Rill reached for the petty officer's glasses—raised atop of her head—and fitted them across her nose.

"Better?"

"Yes, thank you!"

Tashigi's smile grew across her face, a kind smile that didn't require premeditated measures or justification. Rill returned it with a crooked half-smirk, the best she could muster under her exhaustion. It had been three days on the sea, and most of her work put her unwavering dedication to wilt. She'd dissected more fish than she'd ever eaten, but there was nothing worthy of study on a Calm Belt. The real discovery belonged on the ragged current of the Grand Line, where even the Sea Kings feared to tress.

"Y'know, I've seen you for three days now and I still don't know your name!" Tashigi said, brightly interrupting the young scientist's disappointment.

"Oh." Rill didn't remind her that this was the first conversation they'd shared since she greeted them on deck. More often than not, Tashigi was by Smoker's side, following out his demands and running memos from the transponder snail. After her first and only personal encounter with the mammoth-sized Marine, Rill decided his acquaintance wasn't necessary, and avoided it as such.

A moment paused as she processed the proper way to introduce herself. "I'm Rill," she settled with. "It's nice to meet you."

"Same, same! And, Rill, you're a scientist, too?"

"It's not that simple," Rill replied. Over the past two years, her placement in the program adjusted every semester. If the university placed her with same-aged peers, she dismantled the curve and upset the student body with unrealistic expectations. However, classes with those studying for their masters often earned contempt and aggressive dismissal from not only senior students, but staff as well. Rill had officially earned multiple degrees, none of which resulted in any formal doctorate—technically. "I'm a student at Mariejois University," she explained aloud. "I haven't earned a doctorate yet, so... Hypher and I are just trainees. Assistants. Students. Mule. Whatever's needed at the time. You can call me a scientist, I suppose, but I'm not paid as one. This is Dr. Megalodon's research tour; he was just kind enough to offer two competitive positions."

Tashigi nodded, like everything made sense. "You must be proud, then. I... reviewed the case file sent by the Pelican Reef branch. I'm really sorry to hear what happened to your teacher."

Limbs and blood, falling down, and a maniac's cackle in the background. Rill was sorry, too.

She passed a nod. "It's okay. I lived fine."

"I know this isn't the most ideal situation for everyone... maybe not anyone. Captain Smoker's in the middle of a chase, but we—actually! I probably shouldn't be telling you this!" Tashigi laughed, waving the air in front of her face.

"It's fine. All of our research was destroyed during the attack. We had a carcass we couldn't recover… several specimens and notes, too. We're trying to alter our objective to meet the realistic expectations of our arrangements."

The petty officer laughed again, though Rill failed to see the humour there.

"You might not get to where you like on here," she warned a moment later. "Captain Smoker is really insistent about capturing Straw-Hat. Ever since the incident in Loguetown—"

All of her years spent practicing her expressions, deciding their outcome, and controlling them to suit the situation provided her with the now instinctive stability of her face. Tashigi didn't need to divulge on Straw-Hat; Rill didn't need another ounce of information, not one more syllable to suggest the mayhem that surely overwhelmed East Blue. She wanted to grin, but her urgency swallowed it, shuffling out a grim stare instead. "I understand," she breezed out, and she did understand. If Luffy was on the sea, on the Grand Line already, the navy would be foolish not to mark him as a threat.

Luffy was out there. She had unknowingly chased him, and now, hoped she never found him.

"We'll just have to manage. It's better than opting solo again," Rill shuffled out a moment later.

Later that morning, while Nora's snores filled the room, Rill knew Luffy slept soundly, whether a storm swerved him like a leaf in the wind or the jolly roger of Captain Kid brooded over the horizon. He was on the ocean, on the Grand Line, following a log pose to an island far from Captain Smoker's reach.

* * *

The marines bathed early in the mornings, so Rill learned to forego her bath until the afternoon. Dr. Megalodon issued several distractions to pass off as legitimate work, from scraping barnacles and algae from the side of the ship, to equipping a harness to her waist as she was dragged from behind and told to dive and monitor the existing marine life. The tasks were as unbearable as they were in Pelican's Reef, with the underlining understanding that they were menial at best, and certainly no aid to further her education. Rill swallowed her protests every morning, like a routine pill to stop the jaded realization that their efforts were lost the day the mermaid carcass sunk to the bottom of the South Blue ocean.

The next day, in an attempt to escape the incompetent tasks, Rill searched the ship until she found Luffy's bounty on the floor in one of the Marine cabins. She swept it up without glancing at the soldiers rising in protest, and brought it to the deck where the sun blazoned his trademark straw hat like little flecks of gold. Luffy grinned at her, and her thumb traced the scar beneath his eye, remembering the bumpy discord rather than the feel of paper. Just as suddenly as last night, he was here, in her hands, very close to home.

"Mon-key Dee Luf-fy," Hypher read aloud from behind her shoulder. Rill briefly crumpled up the bounty, using it to swat him away.

"Don't! Don't continue on that line of thought," she chided.

He raised his brows. "Okay. You wanna explain to me in Morse code as to why?"

"Morse code won't aid in this situation. The Marines understand Morse code," she whispered.

"Rill—"

"Yes. Rill. That's all I am. I'm just Rill."

"Okay, Rill And-Nothing-Else. I don't think that plan's gonna last very long."

"It'll last as long as I need it to. My goals are to give this program my full and undivided attention. This-" She raised the crumpled bounty under his nose, waving it in quick jerks. "—is a distraction. A troublesome one. The only relative I'm supposed to link myself to is my grandfather. And not openly, because he's far too impressionable."

"I get it, I get it," Hypher said, but his words heralded to stubborn ears.

"They're after Luffy," she hissed under her breath. "Luffy is the pirate Smoker's chasing."

"Well, it's kinda his job—"

"You said you didn't like him!"

"I don't!" Hypher assured her. "I'm fucking sick of scraping shit off the side of his ship. He's gotta meet us halfway in order for this to work. But… I mean, your brother is a pirate…"

Rill's brows buckled under worry, catching Hypher's gaze as he wiped at the sweat pooling down his nose. Without another word from her, he sighed. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd never say anything."

And without further prompting, he stole the bounty from her grasp, and folded it into her pocket.

* * *

By the fifth day, routine was safely established to survive the next few weeks. Almost nobody knew her name, identifying her instead as the "serious" girl or "the one who doesn't sleep". Raymond challenged her with his constant need for translation, and this generally rescued her from the tasks set by the senior professor, who struggled to find real work for Isamu and himself, let alone a fair margin for the students. Even Hypher glued himself to her side whenever he could manage, dulled to tears by the lack of women (or in most recent cases, the lack of reception from the captain's right-hand woman). Rill was as unhappy as she'd ever been, and very much not alone to brood it.

On an otherwise quiet afternoon, after finishing another seize of turquoise barnacles and pink algae, Rill carried her small supplies of bath essentials in a metal pail she'd discovered in one of the closets. With the current size of the crew, everyone was restricted from bathing more than once a week, leading malodorous smells to emit from clustered groups during the hottest part of the day. It was one of the few rules that hadn't disrupted her routine just yet—Smoker still hadn't caught on that she was regularly using their shared unit in the late afternoon when he was guaranteed to be managing his crew on deck. The captain's cabin and hallway were indeed empty when she arrived. She pried the bathroom lock shut, jiggling it for a few seconds to ensure it was secure, before she stripped down and poured a hot bath. She had her first foot in the bubble-ruptured water when a thundering knock shook the room.

Apparently, he wasn't as stupid as the bulk of his men.

After covering the more intimate details of her body with a towel, Rill unlocked the door. Not to her surprise, Captain Smoker bore down on her with his grim stare, ash stumbling from the two cigars propped on his bottom lip.

"Hi," she greeted calmly.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Currently, I suppose you mean. I'm wondering why you disrupted my—"

"You know damn well why."

Not if she could play it another way.

"Poisonous algae," she decided. Her eyes steadied on him, ready to fight if he tried to intimidate her with his massiveness again. Smoker only shook his head, cascading smoke back and forth in his path.

"You think I'm an idiot—"

"I did, until a moment ago," she agreed.

The corner of his mouth spurred, and she watched the cigars shudder. "Show some fucking gratitude."

"I am. It's a waste not to take advantage of such a pristine bathroom." Rill had to admire the fact that the first time she dropped the word pristine she was referring to the room where she routinely deposited waste.

Captain Smoker clearly lacked appreciation for this incredulous detail. "If I catch you again, you'll be using the men's room," he threatened. At least she was starting to catch on now—the threats sounded the same as his commands, maybe with a bit more growl.

"I hope they're immune to poisonous algae," she tried one last time.

He glowered at her the way a contemptuous beast would snub its scrawny prey, but the captain left, and she finished her bath. A few hours later when she went to relieve herself, the faucet to the tub had been ripped off.

"That's certainly diligent," she told the ceiling plaster.

* * *

"We're anchoring in Lauffodil today," Isamu told them at breakfast. After eight days at sea, Smoker agreed to port the ship and accept a parcel of military weapons waiting for him at the local Marine base. Raymond overheard the exchange between the captain and Tashigi during his walk back from the male bath, and hurried into the lab room to sign it to his own crew. Rill, whose sign language was strongest, translated the gist of the message.

"Maybe they've caught on. Maybe the Council informed them Garp's granddaughter is on board," Hypher teased.

"I doubt it," Rill dismissed. "Most people only know my grandfather as his first name, or The Fist. It's unlikely even Smoker knows Luffy's related to him."

After her meeting with Tashigi, Rill spared no reason to withhold the captain's mission from her teachers, though she left it to Hypher to explain her urgency, lest she lost face again.

"She has a point," Isamu said from beneath the table, his breaths short and erratic as he battled with one of the legs. "Hadn't a clue until she told us."

"Thank you for regarding that information with vigor secrecy."

"'Thank you for regarding that information with vigor secrecy'. Rill, you're not a friggen robot. Say, _hey! I risked my life for all of yours! Don't rat me out to a bulging psychopath who'd probably dice me into Sea King treats for the fun of it, much less if he found out I was the older sister to a pirate he really, really hates_."

"Bit of a mouthful for her to remember," Dr. Meg chuckled. But the older doctor turned his attention to her, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose until they threatened to fall off. "It's no trouble on our end. For your sake, and your brother's, I hope Smoker proves unlucky in his endeavours."

Raymond knocked his fist on the table, signalling that he wanted to sign something. Rill watched until he was finished, before she started her translation. "Do I—as in Rill—believe the weapon will help find him? I'm... not sure."

"I'm pretty sure about one thing," Hypher said. "It's the Marines we're talking about. They're not smart enough to come up with anything helpful against pirates. Plus, the kid has Rill-blood. Something's looking out for him."

"You've never met my grandfather," she answered calmly. "I wouldn't put it all on luck."

"Luck ain't real," Isamu agreed.

"I wasn't talking about luck," Hypher said, rolling his eyes as the teacher finally emerged from his crouch and seated beside Rill. "A stubborn will to live is probably more accurate."

Despite herself, Rill smiled.

By mid-morning, they were on the outskirts of a massive cove, staring off into a hill-top city. Rocks with jagged teeth lined the shoreline, forcing all ships to port a mile outside from the coast and travel to land on dinghies. Rill and Hypher took it upon themselves to paddle, hoping they might beat the Marines and hit the food markets first. Meals outside of pickled vegetables and salted fish, people who dressed in normal attire, not uniforms that were only washed once a week. Rill sought for a few new pairs of shoes, at least a new set of sandals for the days when the sun brought a reckoning heat and it was too warm to go with sneakers and even more dangerous to place flesh upon the sun-soaked deck.

They reached the shore only after Captain Smoker and Tashigi. Rill fashioned the boat to one of many poles lined in the shallow water and paid the toll to a small man with an arched back and a thick, black beard. She avoided him, intentionally avoided glancing his way, but the captain summoned them before she'd moved much further from the coast.

"Get back to the ship by 8. If you're not on by then, it's not my problem. Got it?"

Dr. Megalodon offered the captain his assurances, but before the mammoth-sized man turned his back to her, Rill caught a whiff of bravery. "You'll leave us behind?" she called out.

Smoker turned his petulant gaze on her. "Good. You do get it."

At least their regards were mutual.

"Not really the best location for a Marine base," Hypher noted as they started their ascent up the main street. The island was tiered like a cake, with the workers and their homes compensating for the base, the shops and markets scattered in the centre, and at the very top, a glorious marble building that blinded you when the sun skimmed across its golden rooftop. The Justice Building presided over the city, a friendly omen that the World Government's roots were strong, and archer's nests docked with machine guns offered a grim dollop of icing to complete the oddly-stacked city.

"Pirate hot-spot," was all Rill said, as she scanned the roads.

"In this place?"

"Most likely. We've only just entered the Grand Line. I imagine most of the outer islands are littered with Marines. As we venture down, it'll probably thin out a bit. Then cluster as we head for Mariejois."

"That's if we return to Mariejois," Hypher sighed.

Rill ran her fingers through her pony-tail. "We will. If he hasn't caught up to Luffy by then, my brother will want to see the New World."

"Your gramps give you guys a death wish?"

"Hardly," she dismissed. "Luffy wants to be Pirate King. You can't sail one part of the sea and call yourself a conqueror."

"He won't get to see even this half if your bath buddy's as smart as they crow."

Rill managed a shrug.

Once they reached the markets, the two students split ways. Rill ventured to the clothing stalls, dragging on until there were nothing but shoes and handbags engulfing her. After purchasing a pair of sandles and a needless set of heels, she killed time searching for a bar. The further she walked, the louder they squawked, until eventually, the simple aroma of food beckoned her inside. The tables were packed with pirates, daring despite the Justice Building only half a mile above them. Jolly Rogers of varying colours and designs boasted around the room, though none featured the grim Cheshire crescent of the Kid Pirates. Rill made her way to the bar; if the menu was decent, she'd sit and order a meal, and if it wasn't, she'd drink until her tongue couldn't differentiate between spoiled or good.

The laughter swallowed her troubles, easing her rigid posture as she ducked into a corner at the bar table. She wouldn't write off the potential for menace, but the grins and cheers for rum reminded her of Luffy, of the stories he regarded as highly as his treasured hat. The tanktop she'd worn that day didn't showcase the World Government's symbol much like her other clothes—and for that, she was grateful to blend in the crowd and pretend all was well.

"This is a dangerous room for a government worker."

Perhaps her hopes rose too son. As familiar as it was, she didn't recognize the voice right away. Her head swerved to face the roaring crowd, but no one emerged from her memories. A second later and she realized the voice came from her other side; the blame for bad hearing felt tedious to repeat, and she accepted the tap on her shoulder reluctantly. She whirled to face him, watching him clamp down on a stool and stretch his daddy-long legs beneath her feet.

"Rill-ya, right?" he asked.

"Don't do that," she countered.

"Hm?"

"Pretend you forgot my name. That's poor manners."

"I've heard a lot of names out here."

"You know _my_ name."

"Alright," he agreed. "So I do. What brings you to Lauffodil?"

Her eyes swept over the current of pirates, swaying to music and jutting their fists through the air as waitresses worked around the room, carrying pitchers of hard liquor. Tucked away in the corner, a music player drummed along in the background, not strong enough to carry over the countless conversations shouting overhead, but apparently enough to placate the eager dancers.

"Enjoying the entertainment," she decided.

"I didn't think this lot was your type."

"I don't have a type," she admitted. Beside her, he waved two fingers together, signalling the bar-tender to refill his mug. Before he left, Rill placed her order as well—"whatever he's downing."

"Aren't you concerned about the Marines?" she asked after her first swallow. The ale went down like an accidental gulp of sea water, but hit her stomach faster than she could dwell on it, and soon after, she'd finished half the glass.

He leaned over, placing the palm of his hand over the rim. "Don't rush unless you can take care of yourself after." Before she could nudge, he continued. "Not really. Marines are easily bribed. This bunch moreso."

"You're bribing your enemy?"

"They don't make enough to deal with all the shit we put them through. The bribes are a trade for both parties. We get provisions… and a bit of peace."

"That's tactlessly terrible," she noted.

"You sound impressed."

"I am," Rill agreed. "You're an odd sort of person, Law."

Trafalgar Law rolled his shoulders, blatantly flashing a supple smirk. "Why're you here, girl?"

Why certainly interested her as well. Of all the bars she passed on her way up the hill, this one summoned her gnawing stomach and brought her back to a face she never expected to see again, outside of accelerating bounties. The situation called for a laugh, so she offered him a smile instead, just before she shooed his fingers from her mug.

"We need provisions, too," Rill said. "Things have sort of… altered."

The captain's brow quirked. "How do you 'sort of' alter something?"

"Oh. Maybe I have a poor choice in words."

"It helps when you let them flow freely."

"You're the second one to say that today," she informed him. The comments of her being robotic, socially-stunted, obliviously awkward—those followed her from the time she could speak. Most people liked her up until they realized she didn't smile very much, or express anything openly, and Rill never made it a habit to speak carelessly, for when she did, her nights were spent awake, going over how the conversation wouldn't have spoiled if she'd changed direction. She did it enough with control; freedom was dangerous with those who couldn't use it properly.

Law leaned forward, his expression bored despite the nimble smile across his lips. He was waiting on her, but she tired at the thought of explaining to another person what transpired on the sea that day. If there was one person who wouldn't care, this man was him. Law didn't seem to care much about anything. He didn't care when he boarded the university vessel in North Blue, he didn't care when Dr. Megalodon kindly obeyed his demands in return for their safety, and he didn't care that she was there now. It was the simple fact that she walked into this bar; if she were a fool, she'd place a bet and say he was bored.

But shuffling Odis into silence didn't change the outcome of his fate. He was assuredly dead, buried feet beneath the earth in scattered pieces, far from the touch of his wife and the gaze of the sea. Odis had nothing left to him but the mere memory of his existence, and the plaguing nightmares he visited every time her eyes closed.

"We were attacked a month ago," she eventually said. It sounded less like a horror story and more like a written record. "I believe it was three weeks after your rude interruption. We were on our way to South Blue, and stumbled upon a mermaid carcass on a winter island. She was lovely, but the last I saw of her, she smelled of formaldehyde. We hadn't even closed her chest before—well. Anyway. We reached the waters of South Blue. Then we lost the mermaid carcass, after Odis was murdered. Scout lost some limbs, and Raymond's voice was stolen.

"So, in a different sense, we're a bit altered."

Beside her, Law took another drink. "Which crew?"

It was all he said, yet it seemed more normal than the apologies from the Marines, and locals of Pelican's Reef.

"The Kid Pirates," she replied. It felt weird to say their name without wearing a smile, like a false grin was armour from offending them. Her head turned back to the crowd, but she couldn't even spot Law's crew through the thick bodies of nameless pirates.

Law won her attention back with a low hum. "Hm. I've heard of 'em."

Rill heard them all the time.

"Finish up your drink then," he ordered, just before he ducked to down his own.

"Where's Bepo?" she asked instead. The great white bear had the only name she remembered outside of the captain's, and she figured if he was here, she would've spotted him.

"Handling provisions," Law answered. "Bepo's good at haggling."

"But he's a bear."

"Exactly."

She considered warning him about Captain Smoker, then thought better of it. Law didn't need her protection—if he hadn't prepared for the worst, it wasn't something to concern herself.

The more she drank, the quicker the bitterness left her mouth, and soon she was soaring through subjects of biology and medicine. Law was a waste of talent as a pirate, yet undoubtedly essential to a crew. She could see him as a notable rival against Luffy, but it was a compliment better spent on someone with a smaller ego. Still, she admired the brilliance of the felon, the audacity in which he conducted medicine and the example he could set for the world if he had the will to care. He was better than her, and her admiration wore stronger than her contempt.

There were no more flashes of the attack. Instead of drinking in blood, she swallowed whiskey and kisses, and the only limbs flying up were the ones of pirates dancing around her. The bar was alive, carving its own ripple in the universe, as though anything outside of the room had ceased to function, and soon she was ensnaring her fingers through Law's, wondering if the approach was as familiar to him as it was to her memory.

"It's a long way back to my ship," he warned her.

She didn't care; for once, earnestly, there wasn't much to care about. "I've peed in a forest," she slurred to him, and much like Hypher and Isamu's fashion, she rolled her eyes at his ignorance. "Go—let's just—let's go!"

Moments later, and they were trapped in the closet-sized bathroom, exchanging kisses as rapid as one might breathe. Law directed each of her movements like the commands came second nature; and Rill let her clothes drop to the floor, her concern drawn to him lifting her onto the counter and not the state of the facility.

"I saw your bounty." She frowned, struggling with the hem of his pants and neglecting the button that still held them together. "What sort of contraption are you wearing, Tra?"

"They're called pants," he chuckled against her ear. His fingers guided her back to the button, where they eventually figured out how to unclip it and the trousers slid away, quickly succeeded by his underwear.

"Whatever."

"Are you going to start collecting mine?"

"No," Rill gasped. She lifted her thighs from the counter, using them to drag Law closer, and reveling over the stem probing between her. His thighs were almost as thin as hers, but his arms twice as strong and they're all she needed as he pinned them above her head. Nearly two months passed since he last fucked her, and Rill wanted the grinding, the sweat, the overwhelming regret she'd hold in the middle of the night, asking why, why, why did she succumb to uncalculated temptation because Trafalgar Law was open, easy sex, and she was famished. They'd shared this routine before, when boredom struck during a midnight walk on his deck. Law knew her body only a smidgen, but she hardly needed an inch to get what she wanted.

There was a point to bringing up his bounty, but that thought's abandoned when he nips at her neck. "Now," she urged, swinging her head back. He found her lips in another drowning kiss, and Rill swallowed the remnants of ale as his thrust sent her into the mirror.

When they finished, Law fashioned his trousers up in one, forceful swoop, and caught her dazed look as he rubbed out the teased wrinkles. She didn't thank him after he redressed her, too. They kissed, and then he was gone, back to the bar for another drink. Rill ignored him for the exit, her feet dragging across the floor as parts of her urged her to stay while her sanity gasped for air. In the salty gust that blew across her shoulders as she pulled back the door, awareness brimmed through her drunken haze.

She couldn't tell the time from looking up at the sun, but it was another hot day. Her parcel of shoes were back in the bar, probably nestled under his ludicrously long legs, and Rill decided to leave them. Heels weren't useful on a ship anyway, and sandals weren't costly to replace. As long as Law was still inside her, she didn't want to face him.

Her feet moved up the hill like hiccups, and the faces that passed her took no relevance from her memory. The air dressed her breaths with weights, baiting the heat that already threatened to roast her, but her sobriety was gone and she still couldn't care very much. Her mind took the world in looping colours, dulled by the heat and alcohol, but the summer island held no mercy for her scandals. Soon she couldn't will her legs forward another step, and slowed in front of a small hut with boarded windows and stacks upon stacks of hay.

What sort of person left barrels of hay out in the open? Were they so generous as to feed the town's livestock without seeking compensation? It was a useless wonder, from a brain that clung to complex explanations from simple happenings. She collapsed onto the nearest bundle, wincing at the sharp needles prodding her arms and cheek. Sleep came as quickly as her earlier impulse, drawing her away from the frustration of another mistake.

* * *

Night stole away the heat from the day. Lanterns glowed outside of shops and homes, illuminating the street she'd publicly slept on, and Rill knew immediately that this darkness had settled. It was surely past the eight o'clock curfew, and she had no time to inspect her balance or durability. A swarm of fog shielded her vision, but she knew the area well enough to follow the road's decline. She ran for the shore, ignoring her cramped legs and rum-lathered burps.

Where she'd left the dinghies in the earlier part of that day, the posts were stripped bare, their loose chains weeping from the prodding wind that carried their tails. Rill couldn't see more than a few feet ahead—the moonlight was gone tonight, stolen by a dense fog, and she was alone, abandoned by her negligence.

She was too sober to cry, but the ache gnawed behind her eyes. Not a single shred of mercy, just as Captain Smoker had promised. She was furious, damned hateful of the mere thought of him, but that anger swept along as briefly as it landed. Until today, her mess ups had always been private—she could hold them far from the reaches of anyone else. Now they were scattered everywhere, imprinted on the skin of a pirate she hardly liked and collecting at her feet on a lonely beach.

"Miss?"

She spun around. It wasn't surprising someone managed to sneak up on her. The hunched-back man from earlier was smiling at her, but Rill returned it with a cold stare.

"I know. They're gone."

"Only about forty minutes, I'd say. Some of your friends were worried about you, saying you might've been attacked. You okay?"

She was fine, but the words were too weary on her lips. Even forty minutes away was too great a stretch for her to swim, in this thicket of fog. She'd have to fetch a ride from someone else—but the thought of crawling back to Law for a favour painted a new gloom over her earlier dine of greed.

The man continued, "That big fella bought a boat off me, if you came back in time. It's small, enough for one person to paddle if you're brave enough. These waters aren't too kind with all the rocks breaching up, but I can give you a lantern for an extra charge."

Swindlers never took a rest, even in dire need. "Sure," Rill agreed. She'd pay back Raymond or Isamu as soon as she reached them. Scrape barnacles without the tedious drawing of straws against Hypher, or even resort to one bath a week if she could just make it back to the ship before it stranded her.

She had no change for the lantern, and nor did the swindler, or so he claimed. The boat was in better condition than she feared, certainly sturdier than the little ship that carried her out of Foosha Island, and likely just as much. If it could carry her across the cove, from there, if need be, she'd turn the lantern into a flare and draw them back to collect her.

Sweat began to build between her fingers about ten minutes out. Her scrawny arms shook over each rotation, clenching down until a cramp formed along her triceps. Rill could swim from one end of a pool to the other, sixteen cycles, and never hurt as badly as she did now. It was the alcohol swimming in her stomach, or the sex between her thighs; the fog quickly snuffed the memories out.

Rill rowed for twenty minutes, counting each stroke and pausing every so often to confer with her compass. She barely saw the outline of the bow of her own boat, so the absence of Smoker's ship hardly stirred her. If he'd left, there was no use hunting him down, anyway. Not until the skies were clear, and the fog had settled.

It wasn't more than ten minutes later that Rill saw the first flicker. Something shimmered in the distance, gently smothered away by the dense blanket closing around them, but it was light. She paused only for a moment to fetch the lantern between her teeth, before her strokes vigorously attacked the sea and launched her further. Another few minutes past, and shouts emerged through the thicket, bearing a striking similarity to her name…

Even if her attention weren't split, she doubted she could have seen the rock scuffing the surface of her path. It gutted her dinghy like a meal, severing a wound too deep to mend with no preparations on board. Rill had enough time to sanction the lantern in her mouth when she dove out of the boat and the water swallowed her up like a snowflake in a cup of cocoa.

For the first minute, it felt like she could breathe water. The liquid ice filled her lungs, freezing her throat and turning her tongue numb, but Rill refused to struggle, only waved harder to bring her head back to the surface. She was a good swimmer, an excellent one; she couldn't panic and go down as a marine scientist-in-training who drowned.

When she broke through the surface, her body quit the child's play and seized harder than before. Her arms cramped, and she was choking, coughing and sputtering faster than she could catch a breath. A month ago, her stomach was stained by a blade, and tonight, a rock caught her off guard.

But the water didn't stay trapped in her lungs, and soon, she could breathe clearly, if not better than when she was paddling. She scanned the area, taking note of the lantern that had escaped from her mouth, still bobbing a few feet away. The fog had yet to dissipate, and she'd lost sense of all direction in the accident. The shouts that drew her path were muted under the ringing in her ears. Frost stitched through her wild locks of hair, those that had escaped from her ponytail, that clung to her face liked black icicles. The weather of the Grand Line has always been a bit peaky, Dr. Megalodon had told her. From day to night, turned winter from summer. Her ragged breaths came out in puffs of seeable gust, but her body didn't feel as cold as it should. She had to ignore it. She needed to keep going.

Propelling herself forward took a minute of coaxing, and as she started to swim again, her arms responded in violent spasms to every lift from the icy sea and every plunge from the biting air. Rill focused on her heart, willing it to calm so she could listen for the shouts again, as hopeless as her dismissive sense might be. If the Marines were still docked, had they spotted her lantern? Could their binoculars see through a heavy wall of fog? She pictured the captain's bath filled with steaming water and mountainous piles of bubbles collecting in the corners, and her feet kicked faster in response. The captain probably wouldn't reward her for missing curfew, but she'd steal the faucet from the men's bath if needed.

The persistent fog refused to release its hold over the cove, and her determined pace kept her face in the water, but a moment later, something wrapped around her arm. Panic flooded down her body faster than the water submerged her and she was jerking back, a scream ready at the back of her throat.

"Rill! Rill, it's Tashigi!"

Rill lifted her face from the water and stared at the two Marines seated in a dinghy. Tashigi's glasses were actually on her face this time, providing no shield from her consoling look. The raven-haired girl quickly turned her attention to the mountainous captain, still sucking back on two cigars and resting his arms on the handle of the oars. Without a word, he handed them off to Tashigi.

"Raise your arms," he ordered.

Rill mulled over his command, deliberating if it was directed at her or his petty officer. She swiftly caught on as the captain watched her with lips as pursed as manageable around two fat smokes, and finally obeyed. Smoker grabbed her by the thick of her arms, lifting her from the water as easily as he might reach for his favoured cigars. He gently dropped her down beside Tashigi and took back the oars.

"How'd you know I was even out here?" Rill asked through chattering teeth. Smoker dumped a fat, wool blanket in her arms, needing no command for her to wear it. Rill buried her face in the fabric, waiting for the numbness to leave her lips. Her knees shot against her chin as they struggled to fight the shudders raking through her entire body, and Rill was thankful that the hot day put her in shorts, as she started to rub warmth back into the exposed flesh of her thighs.

"I left a small transponder snail with the dock manager. He told me when you were on your way."

She frowned, drawing her face away from its desired warmth. "You bought the boat?"

"Yeah."

Smoker moved the oars under the same perfect command he'd used to pull her from the ocean; his arms rotated without strain, passing through the water as though it was part of him. Within minutes of paddling, she could make the outline of the massive ship.

"What happened to leaving me behind?" she asked, folding the blanket around her like an envelope. It wasn't a conversation they could hold once they reached the crew; not unless she fancied another private session.

"You took the boat," he replied simply. Rill glanced at Tashigi, who smiled in return.

The captain continued, "It takes something bold to try these waters with fog and shards of rock. If you'd headed back for a hotel, I'd've written you off as not my problem."

She tried to understand him—earnestly struggled to see the meaning in his words, but her social inadequacy was slowing down the translation. Her head ached, not as much as her arms, or legs, or lungs, but enough that she didn't want to dissect him anymore. "So by your definition, I'm still your problem, then."

Smoker released a long trail of smoke before he glanced at her. His red hues looked black under the silhouette of the lantern. "Yeah. As long as this carries out, you're my responsibility."

"Well…" She paused, waiting for the drum within her head to quiet.

Beside her, Tashigi ushered pleas to her captain, repeatedly begging him to slow down. "We can't afford to cap-size, sir! You're too big for us to carry back! Look, she's just froz—"

"Shut up!" he ordered crudely, and Tashigi mewled a low whimper.

"Thank you for… thank you," Rill managed at last. Maybe tonight wasn't reserved for social formalities; somehow, he seemed to understand that. Smoker nudged her feet with his boot, and though she didn't understand the meaning behind the gesture, she awarded him a half-smile.

Everyone was waiting for them when they docked beside the ship. Pulleys descended from the sky, and Smoker told her to sit still as he fashioned the dinghy into place. They emerged at rapid speed and before long, she was dragged from her seat and into the violent arms of Isamu.

"YA DAMNED MORON!" he roared, crushing her into his chest. "EVERY SINGLE TIME WITH YA! YAR NOT HAPPY 'TIL EVERYONE'S PANICKING THAT YAR DEAD!"

"Sensei, you're the only one who thought she was dead," Hypher droned from somewhere she didn't bother to pinpoint. Her teacher finally released her, nearly sending her back into the railing, just as Tashigi had almost slipped a few nights before. Two hands wrapped around her shoulders, steadying her on her feet, and she adjusted the blanket to peek at them. Smoker left without a glance her way, his lips moving as he barked orders to his crew.

Shuffling through the small gathering, Dr. Meg beamed at her through a thick scarf and handed her a steaming cup of dark liquid. "We're happy to see you recovered, Miss… Rill."

"Oh," she managed moments later, when the cocoa reheated her lungs and the breaths came unrestrained and painless. "Sorry. I fell asleep on some hay."

"YOU TOOK A NAP IN A BARN?"

"No. It was a barrel of hay out on the street. I think I was drunk."

Hypher laughed. "A wild animal let loose in the city."

"Stop that," she sighed, but a smile crawled between her chin and nose.

Isamu looked as though he wasn't quite finished stripping her hide, but Nora's appearance silenced him. The blue-haired nurse went right to her side, her arms filled with heating pads.

"Let's let her rest, huh?" she told the group, flashing them two rows of teeth lined with a deep red lipstick. "I think you're gonna need a snuggle buddy tonight!"

"Do you drool?" Rill asked her.

Nora didn't register that Rill had asked a serious question, and then she was laughing again. "Depends on how raunchy my dreams get!"

* * *

From aches to sores, Rill awoke after managing three solid hours of sleep. This time, she didn't waste testing the patience of her body. Nora hugged the wall with her lithe frame, and Rill noted that the tiny nurse had stolen most of the blanket during their slumber. She forgot how much she'd missed someone lying beside her at night, and couldn't be bothered by the chill that caused her limbs to tremble.

Murmurs swept under the threshold as she passed closed doors, but Rill didn't linger to eavesdrop or wait for someone to spot her. She went right to the top of the deck, relieved when fog no longer hindered her vision. The moon was absent in the sky, but the starlight carried enough reverence to reveal the obstructions in her wake.

The ship ventured under Smoker's orders, but the captain was nowhere in sight. Crewmen scuttled between the quarter deck and the bridge, and Rill moved to the seaboard, drinking in the peace and calm. Something disrupted her gaze in the distance. She squinted, hoping to sharpen her range, but the shadows refused to rupture. Quickly, Rill navigated around the deck until she found one, and scooped a gold, brass monocular between her fist.

The object was blurred under its current setting, but Rill maneuvered the handle until the outline solidified. It was a ship, not to her surprise, but the raise of a Jolly Roger halted her ease. The emblem wasn't familiar, but on the Grand Line, that wasn't assuring. Pirates of all kind prowled these waters—one of the most notorious of the sea had casually used her home village as a base for the sake of convenience while he conquered other places. Another encounter with a Captain Kid-mentality, and tonight might finally end her lucky streak.

Instinctively, she summoned fear; and then, it was gone.

From the bow to the sternum, Rill swept the ship in search of a distinct figure or face, one she could draw from bounties collected on the bulletin board in the hall. But no one crossed the deck, and from the state of the ship itself, there hadn't been recent maintenance. The ship was abandoned in every sense of the word, propelling through the water as though led by undetectable strings.

After a few minutes, it drifted from view, and Rill lowered the monocular, her arms too tired to hold it any longer. She understood where the gnawing instinct dwelled from; the words of Captain Kid hadn't left her in a month, and surely wouldn't vacate the tresses of her mind until time took effect. He mistook them for a ghost ship in his attack, a seemingly harmless vessel that allegedly tore apart ships in passing solitude.

They now dressed in darkness, with no moonlight and no lanterns to light their course. They passed blanketed from any purposeful glance, and something buried in the sanction of her core taunted her with one, lingering thought: something foreboding had just missed them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just sort of happened that way.


	5. Chapter Four

Natural, honed skills posed a threat to Rill’s livelihood. As an accomplished liar, she seldom afforded effort in a situation requiring a truth she didn’t want exposed. Her crewmates, selectively Hypher, had yet to catch onto this, and the same could be said about her family from Foosha Village. However, this clever mask floundered against the likes of Captain Smoker, who possessed an innate talent of his own: he sensed through bullshit, regardless of how well she monitored and controlled her expressions. Smoker didn’t believe a word that fell from her lips, lest it was irrefutable fact, and took a morbid delight in proving it.

“I smell foul,” she tried to reason with him after three days without tub access. “I smell like a dozen rotting carcasses marinated with scurvy and sulphur, left to dry in the sun,” she insisted, and brought her nose to her shirt only to recoil a split jerk later. “You’ve forced me to a boiling point. I don’t often beg—but for the sake of everyone on board, _please!_ , let me bathe.”

“You smell fine,” he grunted, like it was an endearing compliment worthy of her belief.

Rill idly curled her fingers into thin, skeletal fists, resisting the unfamiliar compulsion to throw a swing. “This isn’t hospitality.”

“You wanna use the crew bath?”

“If I can have it right after this bothersome discussion I’m sure there’s enough bleach on board to disinfect their room.”

“No,” he said, but the corner of his mouth quirked. “What the hell happened to you learning some fucking gratitude?”

She spared him another eye roll. “Thank you, Captain Smoker, for purchasing the means to return my stranded self back to the ship,” she recited, and this was its fifth repetition. “ _However_ —“

Smoker removed the cigars from the corners of his mouth, emptying the ash in a mug sitting on the adjacent coffee table. He angled his head to match the wind’s current streaming through from an open window, exhaling his exhaust away from her face. For that, her gratitude was genuine. The captain watched her with nothing short of a glaring look, but she was beginning to see it was his stationary expression, even less malicious than the ones afforded by her teachers. Probably something he couldn’t even control at this point, like the reserved stare she was often lambasted for.

“We’ll return to this discussion tomorrow,” Rill decided thickly, once she could drive her eyes away from him. Not that she expected tomorrow would make him any more agreeable.

The captain snorted and closed his eyes. “That so?”

“By then, even _you_ won’t reject my smell.”

As their second week aboard the Marine vessel concluded, Dr. Megalodon staged a meeting in mock, formal fashion, which included sealed invitations and encouraging the participants (i.e. scientists) to bring forth any questions or concerns. Rill and Hypher showed up in their pyjamas (which in the ladder’s case, starred the solo appearance of his boxers), but the teachers put their lack of effort to shame by taking an opposite approach. Isamu had fashioned a tie out of an old mast, trimming its edges into an asymmetrical design that branched away in loose, tiny wires. Raymond eclipsed everyone by stealing one of the Marine uniforms from the laundry room, earning the immediate laughter of his two students when he entered the room with his arm raised in a salute.

“I’m disappointed in all of you!” Dr. Megalodon shuffled out, his effort to hide his amusement failing behind the smile brewing on his face. He dressed in a formal brown suit and a white, ironed lab-coat bearing the World Government symbol on its back. _Albert Megalodon_ was embroidered just above the left breast pocket in black, loopy letters. “You bring our university great shame. We have the highest of expectations—“

“With all due respect, doc—” Hypher paused to yawn, “—would you have preferred my shirt stained with beer and fish guts, or my other shirt—stained with beer and fish guts?”

Isamu snorted. “The kid makes my point. You opened yourself up for ridicule the second you sent out envelopes, Meg.”

“I figured we could use some formality at a time like this,” the renowned doctor sniffed.

Raymond nudged Rill’s leg with his boot, prompting her to quickly translate his darting fingers, “It would help if we had actual research to busy us. I agree with that, actually. I’ve never been so stagnant before.”

The shift from silliness to the muted distress building since their leave of Pelican’s Reef distinguished the ease in the room. Isamu collapsed his head behind his hand, trying to rub out the stress wrinkles folded through his forehead, while Raymond ignored Rill to retrieve a sheet of paper from the centre of the table and scribble out his thoughts on the subject. She knew now was her opportunity to speak, or lose her query to resistance.

“It was my mistake to suggest this in the first place,” she said. All four heads lifted, and four sets of eyes watched her uncomfortably shuffle in her seat . “Maybe with a more agreeable captain we could find some harmony on board, but nothing’s happening. We’re not learning. You’re certainly not achieving anything. It’s an unfortunate waste of time here, and the university will figure that out by the time we submit our next monthly report.”

Isamu said nothing, surprisingly. Raymond returned to his messy scrawl, spreading ink across his hands as he hurried down more points. Hypher dug into his bottom lip, his glance switching between Rill and Dr. Meg. Finally, he reached over the table to pat her shoulder.

“This might seem like our only option, and that’s ‘cause it is,” he said to the room. “We won’t find any resolution with the board members, right? This is pretty much our only shot, algae or not.”

Dr. Meg gripped his chin, curling his thumb around a few white wisps. “Perhaps we can implore Captain Smoker to anchor tomorrow. Allow us three hours for a small dive.”

“Seriously?” Hypher asked.

The instructor nodded. “Rill?” he asked her kindly. “He seems to favour you more than the rest of our company.”

“No. He only lets me bathe once a week.”

“Just ask him,” Isamu snapped.

“He’ll say no if I ask him.”

“He’ll say no if _we_ ask him,” Hypher repeated dryly.  

“We need a more accommodating captain,” Rill tried again, but her plea fell to ignorant ears.

-|-

The next morning, in true, reluctant fashion, Rill paced along the quarter deck as the night shift drooped on their pistols and brooms. She waited until the morning crew relieved them and Captain Smoker’s massive form rose from below, looming over the exhausted troops as the clambered up from the hull. A pair of sunglasses sat perched across his nose, but his movements were unhindered - purposeful - as he climbed the steps to the quarter deck, pausing only when he caught sight of her by the ship’s wheel.

“Dammit, girl. You wanna fight this early?” he growled.

Rill frowned at the accusation. “No. I have to ask you something.”

“You _have_ to.” Why did he sound so bitter?

“My professors have demanded it. They think you like me.”

“What the hell gave them that idea?”

Despite his outlash and disgruntled tone, Rill’s frown suddenly vanished. “Do you regret purchasing that boat now?” she asked, her voice inflected with slight interest.

“Every second,” he answered.

She chuckled, bowing her head to hide her smile. It was early enough that her humour was nearing the borderline of delirious, but she didn’t want to explain that to him. When she glanced up again, Smoker was watching her, the thin line around his mouth looser than before. Not a smile, but it was soft.

A soft glare.

“What do they want?”

“We’d like to stop the ship today, and spend a few hours on a diving expedition.”

“Like hell that’s gonna happen.”

“Okay.”

When she didn’t prod further, Smoker reached for his forehead, rubbing out a few angry wrinkles. “ _Why_ the hell do they want to dive around here? Last I checked, you wouldn’t see much besides a few Sea Kings, and I ain’t got the patience to save any more of you.”

She studied him carefully, removing all trace of emotion from her voice. “There’s a coral reef just a few hours north. It’s only a fifty foot dive, so… it’s reasonably accessible and it’d give our research something to start with. We lost all of our—“

“So I’ve heard,” he cut her off. Rill waited patiently, her hands curled around the handles of the wheel, careful not to disrupt their rest. Captain Smoker watched her fingers for a moment, glaring at them as though they’d offered an obscene gesture. 

“Three hours,” he finally said, and this time his glare was earnest. “Then we leave, whether all of you come up or not. Don’t test me a second time, kid.”

“I won’t,” she agreed softly.

As the captain nudged her away from the wheel, she spun on her heel, leaning over his arm as he swerved it into place.

“Bath?” she inquired hopefully.

“Don’t push your luck.”

-|-

“Straws. I love drawing straws!” Hypher grinned as they assembled in the lab room. He’d already discarded the bulk of his clothes, watching lazily as Rill took the time to fold each and every one of her stained articles.

“Isamu won’t let it happen again,” she pointed out, reaching for one of the wet suits fitted for her size. Hypher followed her search, bringing out his own suit and dumping it across his lap.

“Eh, doesn’t matter. This is Dragonheart! We’re gonna find something. Something huge!”

“Nothing out of its normal demographic, Hypher. It’s not fantastical if you find a nest of Sea King eggs.”

Hypher gawked at her with false appal. “Rill, don’t do that. Don’t rain on my good mood with your sour reality. In fact, keep your reality away from me.”

Rill sighed. If she could package away her sour mentality, she’d board up her panic, her inability to sleep at night, her nightmares, and the fear that scurried through her whenever she felt attached to another human being. If she could detach completely from herself, now would be the time. They all called her robotic, and she wished desperately for it to be so. 

“Sorry,” she murmured as an afterthought. “I’d _like_ to find something fantastical, too.”

“Rub it in the profs’ faces. Unbelievable how useless they think we are.”

“They’re hoarding the more relevant tasks for themselves. Wouldn’t you?”

“Hm,” he paused. “No. I want glory, yeah, but I’m here to learn. I wanna work beside them. Hell, I wanna compete with you—as hard as you might make it.”

“You’re a fair rival,” Rill said. Despite his silliness and their frequent banter, Hypher knew his way around a lab room. He wasn’t here to use his pretty looks to distract her, even if their effect had worn off over the duration of their blooming friendship.

Hypher paused in conversation to trail his legs across the table, then leaned back for a more comfortable view of her. “So.”

“So?” she repeated, drawing her brows together.

“You gonna spill the beans on what you were up to the other day?”

“And which day was that?”

“C’mon! When the Great White Beast had to save your ass.”

“Oh. I thought I told you,” she lied.

Hypher grinned. “Nah, just the hay-napping part.”

“It wasn’t very exciting,” Rill said, beginning to work her wet suit on. “I had a few hard drinks.”

“Not gonna hide my surprise there. I mean, drinking’s one thing, but getting drunk on your own…”

Rill debated whether she wanted to air the truth or allow his misconception to continue. She kicked out her legs, knocking his heels away from her space and shouldered the railing. The navy blue wetsuit swallowed her body, hugging her joints into smooth, round corners instead of their usual pointy form. It left her feeling naked.

“I wasn’t by myself,” she confessed, using the same monotone speech reserved for classrooms.

Hypher’s brows shot dangerously high. “Rill, did you hook up with a Mari—“

“No,” she cut him off, “no, I really didn’t.”

“So… stranger? You gotta be careful—men take advantage of ladies who can’t handle their—“

“I handle my drink fine,” she sighed. She stared at him as he hovered over the table. “Mostly fine. I wasn’t in any danger.”

“Did you fuck him?” He cut right to the point, and again, Rill wasn’t sure if honesty worked in her favour. Hypher’s rant was already unfolding in the tresses of her mind, reminding her of all the fears she wouldn’t face.

“I did,” she said, and grimaced when Hypher’s grin washed over his face.

“ _Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiill_ , I’m so disappointed in you. Why would you fuck a stranger when I’m an able-bodied man—“

“Law, Hypher. It was Law. He was in the bar when I dropped in.”

A dramatic eye roll swept away his blooming smile. “Great choice there,” he said, drenching every word with his scathing tone. “Have you ever, y’know, considered fucking someone who isn’t a complete piece of shit?”

“You,” she shot back. “I’ve managed to avoid you.”

“Fucking Poseidon, Rill.” Hypher shook his head, his blonde spikes scurrying from the motion. “Did he at least, y’know…?”

Rill frowned. “What?”

“Did he… shield the sword?”

“His sword wasn’t with him, Hypher.”

“Oh god,” he said, ducking his mouth behind his hand, but she failed to understand why his grin was breaking apart in laughter.

“ _What_?” she insisted.

“Did he bother using protection? Y’know… like a _rubber_.”

“We… were drunk,” she explained flatly, suddenly realising his intent. “No. Nothing rubber came between us.”

“Rill,” Hypher said. He leaned towards her, taking no consideration for her preferred distance and safety circumference. “Pirates are gross. Pirates are worse than shitty village boys and snotty college mates. Pirates carry diseases on all parts of them, including their adventurous little soldiers. And sometimes, those soldiers will leave behind contraband—inside your fucking womb. Smarten up.”

“I was _in-e-bri-a-ted_. And Law’s a surgeon, Hypher; I’m sure he’s well-informed about the likes of venereal diseases. He’s more brilliant than you. Maybe me.”

“That doesn’t change babies!”

“There’s no baby. Stop lecturing me.”

Her fellow intern hushed, but she knew it was only temporary. Rill wasn’t sure how to explain how this carelessness happened. She knew she didn’t owe him an explanation—but there was a peculiarity between her and Law, and what happened that day. She felt bold under Law’s desirous gaze, and though the aftermath brought consequence, she hadn’t minded that either.

“I told him about Odis,” she said, avoiding the rest of her thoughts. “I suppose he was sympathetic.”

Hypher’s grudge etched into his dismissal. “No, he wasn’t.”

“He acknowledged it,” Rill corrected. “I think… I was having a tiresome day. And Law isn’t a tiresome person. He’s just… perplexing, and he reads people with little effort. I envy that.”

The stern look on her companion’s face dropped. “You get me pretty well!” he said brightly. She could hardly follow his shift in mood. “I guess relatively well. I’m not as much as a shit as you’ve tried me for. I have good quirks, like most people.”

“I don’t dislike you, Hypher.”

“Great. That’s great. I, uh, don’t dislike you either, buddy.”

“I meant that kindly.”

“I know you did. You meant it in your own, freaky way. I appreciate it.”

Rill turned away, hiding her awkward, crooked half-smile from view. It resembled more of a smirk, and she didn’t need Hypher to suspect her of mocking him, not when she felt relieved by his concern. She couldn’t welcome it, not the way a normal person might reach out for a friend, but its existence provided an almost safety net to her troubling lapses in thought.

“Hey,” Hypher piped up again. He was wearing that smile, that agonizingly kind smile, the one that told her he couldn’t be deceived by her dismissive assurances. Her stomach began to sting, as though a branch armed with thorns had began wrapping around it. “Is there anything else on your mind? Are you… pining after Law?”

And even while expected, Rill felt her resolve splinter into a thousand fears. 

“My heart’s been hurting. In my chest,” she said, rolling her eyes at her own dramatics, but her voice was deflated of all emotion. “I keep wanting to visit the lab and sprawl my ribs open on the table, to see if all the pain in there has a real cause. And then fix it. Stitch it together so I can be a little more whole again.”

“Rill…” God, she resented that concern. How patronising.

“This isn’t appropriate,” she said in a desperate attempt to deflect. “I know. Sorry.”

“I think you’re just tired. It’s been a long... _long_ month and a bit. Take a day to just sleep—I promise I won’t miss you when I’m scraping algae off the keel.”

Hypher’s smile was still warm, gentle under the wide stride of her eyes; hers were too terrified to close in case tears followed after. “I can’t sleep anymore,” she said. The confession deflated from the ball of anxiety fisted between her fingers, and she trembled, not because it was profound, but because it was honest. Not another one of her calculated lies. “I could sleep again, after going to university. When I was no longer the caretaker. And now I can’t sleep anymore.”

She knew what he was going to do, and still, she wasn’t prepared for his arms as they engulfed her from behind. He tucked them away appropriately, his lengthy limbs secured over her stomach and across her chest, hugging her tightly to his front. She could barely move, and couldn’t string any words to protest. There was no need to struggle, yet the panic was almost suffocating.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into the back of her hair. “I didn’t know it was that bad. Nora said you kicked a lot and—I just— thought you kicked a lot-lot.”

Rill released a sealed breath, feeling it shake past her lips. “It’s okay.”

“We can get you medication,” he suggested.

“No. I’d rather not form any dependencies.”

He let her go. “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” he promised, but she hadn’t considered Hypher one to gossip about her. Not in any real sense. “But think about it. If work picks up, you’re gonna need your sleep. We don’t get much of it as it is.”

“Please stop,” she whispered. His face looked as unhappy as hers, but he did. Silence reigned between them as they changed into their wetsuits. When they met with the professors on deck, Isamu was the first to comment on their solemn looks.

“Don’t tell me you two are at it again,” he spat.

“We’re fine,” Hypher brushed aside breezily. “Gettin’ in the zone! Rill and I are gonna uncover some Sea King eggs!”

Rill translated Raymond’s rapid gestures, “We don’t need eggs, Hypher.”

“Sure we do. Scrambled eggs for everyone!”

The scientists shook their heads. Rill spotted Smoker shouldering the helm, his fingers sprawled across the wheel as he sucked back on two cigars. She took the stairs two at a time, noting how his eyes followed her every move.

“Thank you,” she said once she reached him at the top. “We appreciate your compliance.”

“Are you their permanent messenger now?”

“It’s a likely presumption. But I figured I didn’t need to pass it through them just to thank you.”

The massive captain finally chuckled. “Three hours, kid,” he reminded her, nudging her out of the wind’s current as he exhaled another gasp of smoke.

“Yes. The oxygen tanks won’t last longer than that.”

“Good luck.”

Rather than take the stairs again, Rill leapt off the quarter deck, landing a foot away from her group. Hypher had most of his equipment fashioned, and laughed at the glowering look settling on Isamu’s face at her uncourteous arrival. Rill quickly stretched her arms out, accepting the buoyancy control and breathing apparatus. When the tanks and air pressure were secure, the two of them launched off the side of the ship, Rill landing seconds sooner than Hypher.

They took their time descending in the water, adjusting to the pressure every few intervals. She kept an eye on her waterproof watch, properly descending under the textbook’s guidelines. Hypher was a little less circumspect; instead, dropping at will in an urgent need to abandon the surface. They could both see their target without the use of flashlights, the reef amassing such a great distance that the people onboard could spot the bright colours bouncing from the sun’s touch. Minutes and minutes passed, and when Hypher reached the bed first, Rill abandoned her caution and allowed her competitiveness to snake her down.  

Iridescent pinks and aquamarines erupted from the great cavern; their thin, wiry fingers reaching towards the surface as determinedly as a drowning swimmer. Fish gaped through the pockets between the branches, peering at the full-masked divers with earnest curiosity before dispersing as they passed them by. After another three feet, Rill found her first nest of Sea King eggs, and waved Hypher over to admire them.

As they couldn’t speak, he sufficed with an excited thumbs up.

The further they ventured, the more she noticed. Fish she had only studied behind pages floated across her goggles, rendering her into a startled state. Several times she abandoned Hypher’s side to give chase, only to return to him when the fish proved to be more agile swimmers. Everything was fascinating, from the colourful reef to the enthusiastic, marine life to even the algae, and Rill forgot the past few weeks all at once.

As she crossed over a patch of deep, ruby branches, something flickered under the glow of her flashlight. She tugged on Hypher’s shoulder, signalling her eyes and prodding the light at the shadowed crevice. He shook his head, looping his finger in a circle by his ear, and though he couldn’t see her disdain, he was wise enough to kick off ahead.

But Hypher was wrong. When she descended further into the coral bed, she discovered the source of her intriguing glint from the flashlight’s beam. They were eyes not unlike the ones she poured over just a month’s past, though the orange hues guarding his irises dulled under the ocean’s darkness. The serrated flesh from where his arms once draped were clearly removed post-mortem, and small, carnivorous fish nibbled around his gaping shoulders. This merman was nothing like the pristine condition of her last corpse, and given the rot around his fin, he’d been dead for at least two days.

She couldn’t shout for Hypher, and truth be told, she wanted the credit for this discovery. She wanted the proof that she wasn’t damaged, or incomplete from all that had happened. She was just as proficient as the day she graduated from her programs and excelled into Dr. Megalodon’s shadow. Hypher could dive for his pearly eggs—she wanted research that would give her missing sleep purpose.

The coral forked around the mermaid, trapping him from any convenient means of release but Rill knew better than to tug and prod. She angled herself through the branches, breaking a few arms with the shove of her oxygen tanks and mentally apologised for disturbing the eco-life. Reaching for the rope tied at her hip, she fastened it around the merman’s torso, tying him to her in case he dislodged. The scales ruptured along his fin flashed in dull, scarlet tones but they didn’t separate as she slid her arm beneath his tail. As fragile as his flesh seemed under her trained eyes, at the gentle coaxing from her arms beneath his carcass, he leisurely began to float up like a bride lifted by her new husband.

The small fish crowding him dispersed from their feast, their tail fins waving angrily in their departure. Rill levitated on spot, admiring the ravaged carcass like his sister who’d gazed at her with a dead, wistful grin. His mouth parted in a trapped ‘o’, too wrangled to close on its own—even his lips flapped away from him, ripped from his face in death.

Something nudged her leg, and Rill folded her gaze to find it, angling her neck to face the deep chasm below. The black cavern she hovered over could have a number of Sea Kings or cephalopods waiting in its midst, but she spotted no such beast. Nothing but branches of coral and an impossible depth removed from the light’s touch.

Then, all at once, the current changed. She heard the snap before she registered where it came from, and in seconds, she could no longer breathe. Rill lunged, knocking the carcass into a bed of coral as she attempted to spin around and dislodge whatever beast that had sunk its teeth into her equipment. The creature wouldn’t budge. The wet suit tightened all around her as panic flooded—she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and the mermaid carcass was teetering towards the abyss below.

Wherever Hypher was, he wasn’t near enough to pry her free. She knew it was a risk, a foolish, life-ending risk, but her fingers fled to her zippers and hooks, unclipping all of them and severing her link to survival and evicting the beast in the process.

Without the extra weight encumbering her, she was starting to float up. Without air filling her lungs, colourless, blotchy spots were beginning to form and crater her vision. Rill scooped down for the mermaid, her fingers trained around the rope that connected them by their waists and kicked towards the surface. Ignoring pauses, ignoring necessary breaks, her head felt cracked, spilling out into the water as she abandoned all of her training for the instinctual need to survive.

Moments swept by, and then Rill broke the surface, discarding the full-face mask for her lungs to greedily feed while the rest of her teetered on the surface. Her lungs filled, and her head was broken. Her whole body sagged in the water, but she was alive and there was a mermaid carcass in her clutches—

And then she noticed the severed rope, waving at her hip. Cut when she couldn’t notice, couldn’t spare a second to focus on anything but kicking to the surface lest she join the corpse she sought to save.

A part of her, however small, suddenly wished she had drowned instead. 

“OI! RILL! RILL, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”

She was too tired to note her surroundings. The sun was bulging and heavy on her skin as it buried the world in heat and exposed the massive, green ocean beneath her. She didn’t want to turn her head and find the ship where her teachers would soon discover that she’d ignored her surroundings and suffered yet another attack.

And lost yet another mermaid carcass.

“Go away,” she murmured, sealing her eyes shut as she bobbed in the water. The creature could come up and swallow her whole and she’d gladly allow it. The days of missing sleep were catching on her, and now seemed as good a time as ever to spend them. The heat, the water; she could even disguise the distant shouts as playful white noise if she willed so.

When Hypher emerged beside her, Rill was half-parted by sleep, too spent to answer his panicked pleas. It wasn’t until he tried to collect her in his arm that she fought back, shoving him off of her.

“Enough!” she shouted.

“Fucking hell, Rill, I thought you were drowning!”

“I’m just—I’m fine. I’M FINE!”

“Al- _right_!” he snarled.

Above them, a shadow cloaked the sun, suspending the direct heat that had lapped at their heads only seconds before. A voice boomed into a megaphone, screaming, “ARE YOU TWO ALRIGHT? FOR GOD’S BLASTED SAKE—“

“We’re fine!” Hypher shouted, sputtering up water. “Just get us up—LET US UP!”

A white and red-striped floater sailed over the edge of the ship, landing on the water’s surface just a few inches out of Rill’s reach. Hypher lurched forward and brought it back to her. He forced her arms through the gaping hole, his low voice humming beside her ear with words she couldn’t register. Instead, she clung to the rubber life-preserver and hung on as she was dragged up towards the deck.

“Why the hell is it always you?” Isamu growled down at her. He yanked on her brachium, nearly disconnecting it from her shoulder as he tossed her onto the deck. A few marines reached down to bring her to her feet, their mouths opened in sputtering shouts of “hey, don’t throw her around!” mixed with “I’m not paid for this crap”.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention,” Rill gasped. She abandoned the marines, waving off the blanket they had folded around her shoulders. Her legs felt paralyzed, too disconnected to bend properly.  As she staggered over to the railing, Raymond descended on a rope to meet Hypher in the depths below, who continued splashing as he tried to balance the mermaid’s carcass above water.

“Any time you feel like sending a tarp down would be nice,” he rasped.

“Oh, Hypher,” Rill sighed, and she knew she might faint if she stood any longer so she hung her torso over the edge to smile down at him. “I feel a great deal of affection towards you right now.”

“Yeah?” he shouted back. “You gonna make it up to me later?”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

Hands tugged at her again, earning her fight as she tried to slap them away. “Stop,” she demanded, glaring at a Marine marked with a red cross on his shirt.

“Miss, you need medical attention—“

“I don’t. Really, I’m—“

“LISTEN, YOU! JUST GO WITH HIM!” Isamu roared.

At her teacher’s command, she unpeeled herself from the railing. Rill managed three steps on her own before collapsing across the floor. Even as the world cascaded in waves, she found Smoker’s red hues glaring down at her from leagues above. 

Her heart thundered in the buried cave between her lungs and stringy membranes, against the resistance from her ribs, but she stayed awake. Rill watched him as he lifted her from the slivered rows of wood and hung her against his chest, needing only one arm to support her weight while the other fished around in the air, accentuating orders she couldn’t hear against the rampaging ring in her ears. But as the great, mammothed captain carried her down the hull, she stayed awake for every minute, her eyes tracing the movement of his lips, pondering the words that rang inside her skull. They had yet to reach her room - or perhaps he was carrying her to the medical bay - but Rill was gone by the time a door creaked, snuffed out by the darkness of exhaustion. 

-|-

“I apologize profusely for all of this trouble. Believe me, Captain Smoker, we have no desires to waste your time.”

The colossal captain dwarfed the elderly professor, both in stature and in present authority, but still Dr. Meg beamed at the man, offering him his weary smile and a condoning tilt of his head. Behind the tenured professor sat his two junior associates; Isamu, taking sips from a flask he repeatedly brandished from his inner vest pocket, and Raymond, whose stare bore intently at the captain’s leer. Hypher huddled in the corner, his tall, lanky frame failing to blend to its environment while he quietly battled the impulse to interrupt his teacher.

On the opposite end of the room, crowded behind a bare desk, Captain Smoker stood on both feet, his thick arms folded across his front. His mouth was bare of its token cigar, likely due to the petulant decline of his mouth.

“One of your students is completely unhinged,” he said, his scowl residing behind his words. “You don’t think that’s a problem?”

“Miss… Mo… Miss Rill…. Ah, yes, Miss Rill is resting now. She’s accustomed to forgoing sleep in the pursuit of her studies. It’s common with academic achievers. We have no reason to suspect she won’t make a smooth recovery..”

They knew too little of him to register his glare of disbelief. “She went into shock. I might not have a background with a diploma, but I know a nervous breakdown over stress, and your kid is done.” The captain paused, fingering one of the cigars housed over his left pectoral before thinking better of it. “You should let her go.”

“Just a minute,” Hypher interrupted. He stepped forward, ignoring the rapid head shakes swinging from Isamu. “Yeah, I get it, you’re a marine and you see officers losing their shit every time a big name pirate swings by, but Rill’s not like that. She _isn’t_. Rill’s just… look, you can’t throw her out of this program because of a few lousy coincidences! If a Sea King lunged up from the waters right now, I bet ya it wouldn’t be Rill screaming at the top of her lungs. She’s cool. She’s very… eh… I know her. I’ve seen her on these waters.”

The rest of the room watched him, waiting as he fumbled with the spikes along his forehead. “If you throw her out of the program, she’s not gonna go back to the university,” he warned. “She’ll get in a dinghy with a few notebooks and a Log Pose and simply go off on her own for some other project. And then, yeah, she might die. Because that girl’s an _idiot_.”

Beneath his moustache, the chief doctor smiled. “Unless Miss Rill jeopardizes the reputation of the university, or intentionally abandons our instruction, I would like her to stay on board. She’s a brilliant student. One of the very best I’ve ever seen.”

“And let’s be honest,” Hypher interrupted. “She’s, like, one of three chicks on board. If we lose Rill, we’re losing 33% of our eye candy pool.”

“You shut up now!” Isamu growled.

Smoker returned their earnest stares with a malevolent glance of his own. “You damned scientists are always ready to push it. Look, I’m not wasting anymore of my time arguing about this shit. But if she starts pulling out her hair and mumbling under her breath, she’s gone. My crew isn’t here to put up with it, and neither am I.”

“If she starts leaving piles of hair everywhere, then yeah. We won’t make a fuss,” Isamu agreed.

Hypher rolled his eyes and headed for the door, throwing it open before he spared one last glance at the group. “She’s tough, okay? Considering what she saw… just… let her get some sleep. She’ll be fine once she wakes up after a day. I swear on the Warlord Hancock’s giant—“

“GET THE HELL OUT, ROOKIE,” Isamu roared.

-|-

When Rill regained consciousness a day later, it was Hypher she found draped along the edge of her bed, his lips parted over a tiny pool of drool. The spikes in his blonde hair draped across his forehead in a greasy, haphazard retreat, but still she reached for the threads, gently brushing them aside. Like the time she waited at his side in the hospital for him to wake, he was there now.

“How long did I sleep?” she asked him when his eyes opened twenty minutes later. He leapt from his crouch, startled by her alert presence.

“Whoa! C’mon! A little warning there,” he said, huffing out the end of his words.

“Sorry. I think I slept longer than I should have. At least… it feels like a long time.”

“Er, yeah. Probably. Lemme check…” As he fumbled in his pockets, she turned towards the circular window, peeking at the night sky sprinkled with stars and topped with a bright, opal moon. The ocean drummed quietly against the side of the ship, cautious as it rocked them forward, towards the captain’s unknown trajectory.

“Yeah,” he said from the side. “Yeah, it’s about 9 now. You passed out yesterday.”

“Okay.”

“They, uhm… listen, nobody’s mad at you or anything. I mean, the Great White Beast sort of was, but we convinced him that it was an isolated incident. You’re good to go. You’re fine.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? What did Captain Smoker say?”

Hypher hesitated, his tongue rubbing along his upper lip. “He… he thinks you’re having some sort of psychotic breakdown. I didn’t tell him you were—I swear, I didn’t mention anything you said before. I just passed on that you needed some sleep and you’d be good to go—“

“He thinks I’m having a _psychotic breakdown_ …?”

“Well! Rill, you were a little agitated when we pulled you out of the water. You nearly died trying to grab a carcass of all things. Yeah. He does. I’m a little worried about you, too.”

But she ignored him, shoving him away from her as she scrambled off the bed. In her haste, she finally noticed the IV buried in her arm and the catheter hitched at the side of her leg—both came out of her with little consideration for her tender wounds.

“Rill! RILL, C’MON!”

Abandoning the medical room, she realized she wasn’t familiar with this passage of the ship. The vessel was just large enough for her to occasionally find herself lost, and without any markers to lead her, she retraced her direction towards the stairs. Eventually, after climbing up another floor, the doors lined themselves in a familiar fashion.

Her tiny fists hammered at one in particular, the furthest from the rest. Her lips pursed from the roars waiting at bay, and when the captain finally did shove open the door, she was quick to divert past him, her body trembling as she moved into the centre of the room.

“You…” She paused, swallowing because her throat was tight, like it was wrapped by a cord and if she spoke too loudly, too quickly, the pain would bring tears. “You tried to have me thrown out?” She breathed, but it didn’t help. “Because if that’s true… Why? Why would you do something like that? IS IT BECAUSE I WANTED MORE BATHS?”

“This,” Smoker said, waving his cigar away from her. He was shirtless again, and his piercing, white spikes were matted. He must have been resting. “You’re hysterical.”

Rill balked at him, her mouth twitching between unsaid words. Her long, raven hair framed her face in frizzy, matted knots. She looked tiredly deranged. “RI… RIGHT NOW, YES. I’m very, very angry! I’m not accustomed to this much anger, but you... you infuriate me!”

Captain Smoker reached for the folds beneath his hairline. “For fuck sakes, it isn’t personal. You’re a fucking mess to deal with right now. Go back to you room and—“

“NO! I want to know why. Why you felt it was so prudent to jeopardize my internship!”

The captain hunched against the door, removing the exit he’d just offered. When he stared at her, it was almost pitying. When he opened his mouth, despite the gruff manner of his voice, he spoke low. Carefully. “I have eyes all around this ship, girl. I get reports from my men about every damn thing that happens. You don’t sleep. You’re constantly at work doing god-knows-what. Every time I let you and your team off this ship, it’s _you_ who searches for whatever trouble that could be out there. You’re a damned pain in my ass, and if that was it, I wouldn’t care. But if you’re sick, you need to get off this ship and get some help.”

“I am _not_ having a psychotic breakdown! I’m exhausted, and that has nothing to do with my psychosis!”

“PTSD is—“

“STOP IT! STOP BELIEVING WHATEVER LUDICROUS COMMENTS HYPHER SHARED—“

“The ‘ludicrous’ things your friend told me are the only reason you have my mercy,” Smoker snapped. “Seems as though he hasn’t noticed what a fucking headache you are.”

“I opened up to him in confidence and he broke that,” Rill said defensively. She was finding it harder to focus on her breathing, now that adrenaline had usurped her bloodstream and her mind abandoned its composed resolutions. Smoker looked more furious than she had ever seen him, but then, she hadn’t yelled at anyone like this in her entire life. For once, it seemed as though they stood on even ground.

“He said you needed sleep. And yet here you are—“

“Because! You wanted me off the ship. And I… It feels like something you should’ve waited to discuss with me. You went over my head to talk to my professors, to drag every possible person into this mess and—“

“Your teachers came to me to apologize for your hazard,” he interrupted. “I brought it up. I’ve seen what the oceans can do to people who aren’t prepared for it. And you’ve given me no reason to believe you deserve a place on this ship.”

Whatever rage-fuelled tirade waited on the cusp of her lips died. The Captain looked at her with a translucent expression, free of the anger of his words, of the belittling manner he regarded her with—because now his honesty was as clear as day.

“I’m making a fool of myself,” she said, nearly gasping on the words. “…I screamed at you.”

Despite her preconceived notions about him, Smoker snorted. Albeit humourlessly. “Yeah.”

“…I have _always_ had trouble sleeping,” she said, following Smoker’s approach and speaking each word with care. “When I was very little, I had maybe four hours of sleep a night, because I had to watch for monsters.”

It wasn’t what he expected to hear, and a curious look crossed his composure before he could flatten it. “Monsters?” he inquired dully.

She nodded. “I was five. I thought monsters would sneak into my room and kill me and my brother. And he was too little to protect us, so I had to. I stayed up to guard us from monsters. And then, as I got older, and monsters weren’t much of a concern, I just got too busy. I’m amazing, Captain Smoker. Amazing in the sense that I know more of my studies than people decades older. I never went to school. I never had a classroom until two years ago. I learned from books my brothers stole for me, from teachers and travellers I encountered on my island, from whatever resources my grandfather could find. They all encouraged me. I learned all on my own, and I forfeited sleep and sheer sanity just so I could muster up the means to get off that island and do something with it.

“I know you don’t respect me; that much is clear. I get that I’m very difficult to handle, and I’m sorry. It’s an unfortunate character of my personality, but it isn’t intentional. I’m here because I don’t want to waste my time. I’m here because I want to learn something, anything, and I want to improve the world around me, even if it’s only in subtle ways. I very much hate that I’ve caused so much trouble, especially because I don’t know how to fix any of this. But I am not breaking down. I am not broken.”

By the end of her speech, she didn’t feel like crying anymore. The parts of her that coiled into compact fear seemed to expunge all at once. She didn’t smile, but then, neither did Smoker. They watched each other, taking into account the other’s movements, the other’s breathing; by the time she was finished studying him, he still wasn’t smiling, but he appeared calm. Almost warm.

“Have you told anyone about any of this?”

Rill paused, turning away from him as his eyes continued to bore into her. “No,” she admitted. “Not that I… it’s not really a big secret or anything. I just make people uncomfortable. It’s hard to say… it’s very hard to say anything to anyone. I try to limit my words.”

Behind his cigars, she swore she saw the corners of his mouth rise. “Kicking you out of your program isn’t my goal here, kid. It’s possible I may have misread you.”

Silence brewed between them as she followed the random patterns of smoke gathering above his head.  
“Me, too,” she agreed.

He hesitated, but she saw a smirk swallow his vague looking smile. “You aren’t gonna hug me now, are you?”

There were many ludicrous things she expected to come from Hypher – so absurd and outlandish that detecting them beckoned her instinctive nature at this point. Smoker floored her, rendering her temporarily speechless while she mentally repeated his words.

“No,” she nervously decided with. “Or.. do you want me… to…?”  
It was strange to suspect that Smoker concluded debacles with such intimate contact, but Rill was feeling brave after her speech. If the captain needed such resolution, she could try. For his sake. 

“I was being sarcastic,” he snapped back at her. Like it was her that had mentioned the hug in the first place.

“I’m not offended,” Rill tried to assure him. “It’s perfectly natural to seek intimacy after a heated discussion. You’re not alone, Smoker.” 

“Great. Thanks for the lesson, doc,” he snarled, but his expression failed to mimic the anger sewn through his words. Rill spotted the subtle presence of a smirk - or maybe it was his second poor attempt at a smile.

“My instinct tells me I should hug you,” she insisted.

“Your instincts led you to almost drown yesterday. Your instincts mean shit.”

“That’s hardly fair. I was distracted. But you haven’t actually said that you _don’t_ want me to hug you.”

Smoker considered her words by lighting up two new cigars. Rill waited for his dismissal, then walked directly to his side, just as he was exhaling a heavy puff. Her hand grazed across his shoulder, finding it difficult to sink into the tough muscle. “Thank you,” she sufficed with, giving him a gentle pat instead.

“You’re kidding me.”

“I didn’t like you all that much,” she admitted. “But I’m resistant to anyone touching me, so I hope this provides sufficient compromise.” 

The colossal captain reached down, brushing his hand softly against her own shoulder. It felt less like a pat and resembled more of a careful squeeze. “Yeah, sure. Get going. Do whatever the hell it is you have to do to suck up to your professors.”

Rill nodded, waiting patiently as he heaved his giant form from its barricade against the door. “Sorry for disrupting your rest.”

“Good.”

She couldn’t resist the smile that tugged at her lips, a smile that Smoker seemed to glower at for a moment longer before opening the door for her.

“’G’night, kid.”

“Thank you, Captain Smoker.”

-|-

“Whatever it was, it was smart,” Rill insisted, admiring the incisions that marred her oxygen tank.  
Her teachers and Hypher grouped around her in a poorly shaped semicircle. The nurse, Nora, was seated at her right, armed with a stethoscope attached to her ears while she monitored Rill’s heartbeat. The stubborn patient had removed herself from bed-rest hours before, but she was now confined to a chair lest the crew act on their threat to tie her down to the bed.

“Sea Kings are,” Isamu agreed, fingering the severed tank of her secondary air supply. “It took out both breathing supplies, cut the bags on your buoyancy control… only thing it didn’t get was your mask.”

“It wouldn’t let me turn around,” she explained. After she had lost consciousness two days prior, the marines assisted with retrieving the merman and under Captain Smoker’s orders, joined the rest of the university team on a secondary dive where they discovered her mangled equipment dangling from the edge of a coral bed. The creature in question wasn’t recovered, but judging by the definitive teeth marks and the close proximity of a hidden Sea King nest, they were all but assured that her attack had been accidental.

“I don’t think it was a Sea King,” she tried to argue, but the professors shook their heads. “It wasn’t large enough,” she added more forcefully.

Isamu waved off her concerns. “Then it was a guppy. You guys were splashing around near the nests, and they fought back. It happens. All we care about is that you’re fine. And damn, Rill, you made a good find.”

“Thank you, but—“

“Rill,” Dr. Megalodon interrupted, his brown eyes twinkling above his wide smile. “If you’re up for it… and if you listen to the instructions of Miss Nora here, I would like you to take point during our autopsy today.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re doing all the brunt work,” Isamu hurried, but he was smiling, too. “Raymond will take notes, considering he’s not good for much else—“

Raymond made an exaggerated point to flip off his peer before Isamu continued. “That said, we’ll let you do some extractions. And—for today _only_ —we’ll go by your instructions.”

“Thank you,” she beamed. Behind Dr. Megalodon’s head, Hypher winked.

After a thorough examination from their solitary nurse, it was decided that there wasn’t anything formally wrong with her. That is, nothing that an extended rest couldn’t repair, but as Rill seldom slept under casual conditions, no one had expected much from their monitoring. Nora insisted that Rill remain seated as often as possible, and she gulped down her fair share of ibuprofen every four hours.

After a well paced walk to their designated lab room, the others took time preparing the corpse. Thin needles held the serrated plaits of flesh, exposing the inner muscles and sampled membranes of the merman carcass. Decayed remnants of his remaining organs glowed grey under the bright, working lights; before they began the botched autopsy, Rill interrupted their silent observations with a note of her own.

“Even if he was harbouring Kraken’s Breath on him… we won’t find it.”

“No,” Isamu agreed. “This is for fun.” 

“Some fun,” Hypher muttered. “He smells worse than the last one.”

“You wanna wait outside?” Isamu snarled.

“Now, now. We have a new teacher in our midst!” Dr. Meg interrupted. The two men silenced, their eyes instead waving to Rill. She continued frowning at the carcass, her fingers carelessly wrapped around a scalpel.

“Harvest the organs,” she sighed. “Run tox reports on the fluids. Take samples of any viable tissue—and since there won’t be any, simply take samples of any odd discrepancies.”

She trained her gaze up the merman, hovering over the swollen state of his throat. “It looks… like he swallowed something.”

“What?” Isamu snapped. He lifted his thick arm to the light, angling it on the corpse’s face. “You sure?”

“No. Clamp,” Rill ordered. Someone shuffled behind her, placing the utensil in her open palm. She hunched over the body, bringing her free hand to gently coax the serrated lips apart. Leaning her head to the side, the light angled from above engulfed the open cavity, revealing a heavy shadow in the back of her query’s mouth. The light splintered as she slipped the legs of the clamp past his broken teeth and sunk into the foreign object. She pulled, removing a foot-long eel from his trachea.

“Now that’s just hateful,” Isamu said, his fingers reaching up to stroke his beard.

“It’s dead,” Rill said, examining the eel under the bright, fluorescent light. “I presume it died inside of him.”

“Can’t we ever just get a normal mermaid?” Hypher sighed.


	6. Chapter 5

The morning following the autopsy, Rill woke her cabinmate by puking all over their bed. Nora, a frequent witness to such mortifying stomach issues, merely complained that the smell would take forever to leave their room. She was reaching for a bucket lodged in the corner, and had it within Rill’s shaking grasp by the time the young intern heaved a second time.

Nora placed the back of her cool hand against Rill’s sweaty forehead. “Someone has a fever,” she said gently, removing her hand before Rill needed to shake her off. “I’m going to get you a cool cloth, okay?”

She stripped the bed of its sheet and blanket, careful not to spill anymore of Rill’s contribution onto the floor. The smell was making Rill’s stomach lunge backwards and forwards, a terrible rhythm that sent her head spinning. She hated being sick. The entire room felt stiflingly hot, all of her joints were tight and her skin clammy. She was almost certain that there couldn’t be anything left in her stomach when she bent forward for the third time. She was almost right - most of the contents of the bucket were now stomach acid. 

Nora returned with the promised cool cloth, and pressed the dripping fabric gently against Rill’s forehead. Their resources were limited, but Nora was kind enough to administer a shot to her rear, something that would lessen the worst of her nausea. Rill sat in silence, watching the friendly nurse as she wedged open the window, then the door, in the hopes of airing out the room by the time of their next sleep.

“I think you should rest, Rill,” she called out sternly, her frown following Rill as she leaned against the wall beside their bed.

“I need Hypher,” Rill croaked, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

“You need rest and orange juice.”

Rill made a face, a disgusting, sweaty look. She took her bucket with her as she crossed the hall to the men’s quarters and gently coaxed open the door. All four beds were occupied, the room filled with soft snores and the terrible pungence of men. Rill crept to the top bunk of her fellow intern, shaking him unkindly and letting him see her face before speaking.

“Come out. I’m sick, and if you don’t hurry, I’m going to get sick on you.”

He regarded her threat as real enough to spare her from his usual lazy crawl out of bed. Hypher presented himself half-naked, as he often seemed to be whenever they were off duty, but he was on his feet and out the door before she finished wobbling into the hallway. 

“You look awful,” he commented, his eyes darting up her naked legs to her sweat-stained shirt with tiny flecks of vomit and bile left from one of her purges. 

“Thank you,” she mumbled indignantly.

He flashed her one of his cheerful grins before bringing his hand to the small of her back, ushering her inside their laboratory room. 

“I think our smoking terrorist might give you an extra bath today.”

“Don’t mention him,” Rill muttered. Smoker clouded her thoughts a little too thickly as of late. She still wasn’t sure how to properly react to him after their surprisingly deep conversation the day before, and the last thing she wanted was for him to learn that on top of everything as of late, now she was a living host to some terrible bacteria or virus. 

“I thought you two were all buddy-buddy now,” Hypher continued to tease.

“No. You’re my only buddy, now please shut up.”

“Aww, Rill. You always say the sweetest things when you’re suffering.” 

Maybe Hypher wasn’t the best person to reach out to. Maybe she should have led Nora in there instead. It’s not as though the nurse wasn’t trained to administer blood work, but she hated other people poking her with needles. She needed to do it herself, and let Hypher process it while she curled up in a corner and puked.

Her hands could barely keep steady as she retrieved the packaged needle from the cupboard.

“Hold on, let me do it.” Hypher tried to interject, but she turned her back to him.

“Rill, let me do it.”

“I can do it,” she snapped back at him. When he forcibly pulled it between her shaking fingers, she finally gave up. Offering her arm with the most visible vein trek and muttering her irritation to the bucket.

“You’re such a stubborn thing,” he mused as the needle pierced through her flesh. All Rill could do was watch, hoping the procedure might settle some of her unease as she witnessed the first vial fill with crimson blood.

“It hurts less when I do it.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I prefer to do it,” she tried again.

“I know you do.” He smiled at her, removing the needle when he acquired his fourth tube of blood. 

While Hypher walked over to the machines, Rill curled herself in a corner, letting her head fall against her knees. Hypher left soon after the machine began to hum, returning with a cold water bottle and a towel he draped over her shoulders. She could only murmur her thanks.

 

Some time later, Hypher gently shook her awake. 

 

“There’s some sort of neurotoxin in your bloodstream,” he confirmed over a freshly printed fax. His face pulled back in a frown as he handed it to her. “Christ, Rill, I’m surprised you’re still moving.”

“It’ll work itself out,” she dismissed, wiping her sweaty palm on the sleeve of her shirt. “Uhm… I need you to keep this between us.” The characters on the page were fuzzy and moving. She squinted at it, trying to steady them. “Get me some… some antibiotics.”

“Well, we’re gonna need a few more tests—“

“No,” she hurried. “I made amends with the captain, and Dr. Meg seems less panicked now. I can’t bring this up to them—it’ll only insight further corrosion between us.”

“And this could _kill_ you. I get that you don’t wanna be a bother to anyone, but if you suddenly, say, pass out on the deck and start bleeding from all of your orifices, it might just be an inconvenience all on its own.”

She turned to him, her expression free of all emotion. “No, Hypher,” she said. “Let me handle this.”

A look of impatience immediately crossed his boyish face. “I’m beginning to wonder if you can handle anything.”

Rill studied the white sheet of paper, inked with her shortfalls and illness. She didn’t feel overtly sick if one could ignore the vomiting, and no more tired than usual. Maybe there was an error in her blood work.

Before she could scrutinize the data any further, Hypher ripped the paper from her clenched fingers.

“I didn’t fudge it,” he started defensively.

Rill shrugged. “Labs are prone to errors. I wouldn’t take offense if you had.”

“Rill, you’re sick. Stop searching for some sort of scapegoat.”

“I’m not sick, I’m barely ill. A couple of days worth of antibiotics should do the trick, alright?”

“If it weren’t for your imprisonment, I’d suggest going to see an actual practitioner.”

“It’s fine,” Rill dismissed.

“And a therapist,” he added quietly.

He turned away from her as she heaved into the bucket.

* * *

Without her baths, the easiest time to escape is during the night. Most of the crew is so attuned to her frequent appearances, they hardly notice the moment Rill crawls up the stairs from the hull, then disappears behind the galley. It was privacy enclosed in the open, where the waves leapt for her heels and the moonlight covered her legs. Rill sat on the small, narrow platform, tempted by the lure of the ocean, with only her determination to keep her afloat.

Six days passed since Hypher discovered her infection. Six days of silence endured between them.

But silence was a welcome friend in the midst of the chaos on board. Captain Smoker rarely regarded her now, delivering curt nods whenever she encountered him at the bathroom door. On Fridays, he returned the faucet to the tub, and she would soak until her toes pruned and the water threatened her with chills. By Saturday morning, the faucet was gone again. Her teachers were more sympathetic, eagre to have her fingers moving in place of dives and excursions, none of which they hoarded any faith in regards to her. No one trusted Rill off the ship; not for the sake of her mental health nor her inability to care for the only body she was entrusted with.

Everyday, every change on the ship, brought more disharmony in her life. She couldn’t find the words to complain, or maybe it was the lack of a person to complain to. She had exhausted the route of Hypher, and nobody else seemed eligible in his place. Constantly, she found herself longing for her brothers or her grandfather; not to burden them with her fears and vulnerability, but to hear them talk of everything else - their successes, their dreams, their new friends. How she would sail the seas just to see them for a single moment and let them go before she could bring whatever karmic downfall that plagued her steps onto them. 

Instead of searching, Rill kept to her wishful thinking, and stayed behind the ship until the dawn crept into the skies and the Captain’s boots crowded up the stairs of the quarter deck. Rill always heard his steps, memorized against everyone else’s, above the scurrying of his significantly smaller men.

They reached the quarter deck almost simultaneously. Smoker looked ready to scoff when he saw her. “When the hell do you sleep, girl?”

“My name is Rill,” she corrected him, “and I already slept.”

“Your eyes are hooded and red.”

“Your eyes are red, too.”

As he crowded the wheel, Rill stepped towards him, inviting herself to swallow his blunt, scarlet hues. Smoke clouded around his cheeks, crawling from the propped cigars in the corner of his mouth and framing his mile-long jaw. But his stare was soft, as unthreatening as she’d seen him during their calmest encounters.  “Smart ass,” he said.

Rill smiled, taking no offense when he didn’t return it. 

“I’m peckish,” she said, as he settled onto a massive, white lounge chair. 

“Always with the commentary.”

“I’ve also discovered several novelties from living on a navy ship.”

“Sure you have.”

“I’ve learned that the area where all of your men sleep is called the rack,” she offered.

“Are you so bored that you’re now studying these idiots? This isn’t a cultural exchange, kid.”

“I presume you’re looking for some sort of flattery,” Rill said, voiding the irritation that stirred in her stomach. “So. Moving along. I’ve also heard that anyone as low as captain can reward bounty hunters. You must feel very proud of your responsibilities.”

Smoker’s shadowed brows darted towards his foreline. He glanced at her momentarily, before snorting through his nose. “It’s a damned day when you of all fucking people are mocking me.”

“I’m sorry. Everyone on board mocks everyone. I figured you needed to feel included.”

“And the fact that I can boot you off this deck without even a mushi call?”

Rill seemed to consider this for a moment. “I think you’re teasing me,” she decided.

Smoker’s face appeared to crack at the rare emergence of his smile. “No. I’m confident I could boot you off this deck.”

“You have abnormally large feet. That has nothing to do with me.”

Taking a seat against the rail that bordered the ship, Rill watched the water instead of the bantering captain. Curious as to whether this was considered flirting because her cheeks were beginning to warm. 

“And you have a small waist, but I could still boot your ass off the deck,” he challenged.

Rill couldn’t help but raise her brows. “Are you saying my waist is small but my ass is not?”

The captain wasn’t looking at her when he grinned behind his cigars. “I’m not sayin’ nothin’.” 

“You’re smiling. You never smile.”

He snorted out a plume of smoke. 

She combed her hair over her shoulder. “Well, no booting my ass. My ass is too proud to receive any booting. You’ll just have to throw me off the deck like a proper gentleman.”

“It’s an ass worth sparing,” he agreed.

Sailors and pirates alike revered the ocean for her ferocity, but Rill had never met a person, lest a man, who raged around her as wild as Smoker. He was unrestrained, and contemptuous, and all the awfuls she so regretted since the day they pulled her into university, but he was palpable and kind and the very safety she feared to seek. Even his rudeness carried a hint of compassion. He had rescued her from the shores of Lauffodil, calmed her from her hysterical explosion just days before. 

Rill wanted to separate him, and force his pieces into diagrams and lists and statistics she could intellectually swallow. There was nothing smart about the current state of her mind. There was nothing brilliant she could say to cease its troubles. The man left her stranded with nothing but a hammering through her veins as her unease boiled over and over and over until every vessel within her promised to burst. 

“You look like you’re gonna be sick, girl.”

Rill felt dizzy as she forced out a breath. “I’m going to go lay down.”  

* * *

Rill thought back to her dramatic release on the fearsome captain. In her memories, he seemed less intimidating now – more restrained and simply annoyed by her outbursts than the malevolent tyrant she and Hypher often painted him as. She wanted to apologise again. The captain who granted his permission for her to use his personal water closet, who paid for her transport back to the ship. And, even when he could barely stand to look at her, he let her university crew dock for several hours just to participate in a meaningless dive that resulted in yet another accident on her end. Rill was cursed, and Smoker patient.

She felt horrible for despising him as fiercely as she did before. As she sat quiet and solemn in her thoughts, she wondered if it linked back to her frustrations about Smoker’s hunt for Luffy. Her hopeless, adventurous, troublesome little pest of a brother was also her most treasured person across any surface of this world. Luffy didn’t need Rill the way most kids tended to need some sort of care-taker. She and her brothers were all raised to live independently, despite the strong bonds they formed in their peculiar, little family. But Luffy never really _needed_ her. He could hunt on his own. If all of his clothes were torn, she imagined he’d have walked around in the buff, or even stolen replacement garments. What she lacked in charisma was swallowed by the confident, cheerful personality of her brother; even those who found him impossible still liked Luffy.

So her worrying about Smoker’s venture seemed pointless. Luffy himself likely didn’t care, although she’d yet to hear a full recount of his episode with the captain. Or more, Luffy probably didn’t know Smoker was after him, but even if they were to reencounter, she couldn’t see the rambunctious boy paying it much thought. Just another day, another marine, another story to share when he finally reunited with Shanks as Pirate King.

“I can see little gears turning in your eyes,” Hypher chuckled as he plopped his lanky form down in front of her. They were alone in the laboratory again. 

Rill lifted her chin to acknowledge him. She hadn’t yet decided if all this deliberation had convinced her to apologise to the merciful captain yet. Would he find it tedious? Like she was just dredging up the past? 

“Still troubled over the lab results?”

Her head slipped back into the presence of her surroundings. “Pardon?”

Hypher smiled over at her. “That eel you pulled out of chiverce’s mouth? Venomous little bastard. That’s what killed him, though. We found a bite mark on his forearm.”

“Terrible,” she said with no emotion.

“Not sure why he wound up inside the guy’s throat… I wanna say nesting.”

“Hm.”

“C’mooooon. Lemme pick your brain, brainiac.”

But Rill was tired of mermaid carcasses and their mysteries. She shifted her head to rest against her propped up arm, closing her eyes and listening to the hums of the laboratories machines. Dr. Meg and the other teachers had several lab specimens aligned on the table, waiting for her to properly analyze them, then document.  

“Your favourite doctor was causing trouble yesterday,” Hypher remarked, trying to catch her interest. 

Rill frowned her uncertainty, waiting for Hypher to press on. 

“Law,” he sighed. “Law was wreaking havoc with his group. We just missed him.” 

“Crew,” she corrected, but her fellow intern merely rolled his eyes. “How did you hear about that? Have you been eavesdropping on Captain Smoker’s scanner?”

“Ugh, can you please not call him Smoker? If we’re going to refer to him, let’s at least call him the tall psychopath with a nicotine problem.”

“Hypher.”

He groaned.

“ _Hypher_.”

“Wha--? Oh. Yeah. I listen whenever I can. It helps to stay informed when it comes to pirates.” 

She noticed the grim slip of his mouth and felt the unspoken dread fill between them. 

“…are you still scared of Captain Kid?” she asked softly.

“The man who ordered his minion to butcher us?” His mouth tightened into a stoic line. “Yeah. He kinda gets under my skin sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” Rill said blankly. And she meant it. Rill never slept anymore, never dared to shut her eyes for more than a handful of hours from fear of encountering Kid and his vicious crew again, or the agony that still burned beneath the barely healed scar along her abdomen. 

Hypher shrugged in response, but it looked awkward against the stiffness of his lanky limbs. “Don’t be. I was pretty paranoid before that guy, anyway.”

“Why?”

He stretched out his legs before resting them on the table top, flashing her one of his sheepish grins as he settled in comfortably. “It’s very rude to intrude on someone’s vague moping, Rill.”

“Hm.”

“But if you really insist,” he said with haste. “I, uh… I saw a fortune teller when I was a kid, and she got spooked reading my cards. She warned me of pirates. That I might… meet my end through one of them.”

“….Hypher.” Rill didn’t bother hiding her sceptical look. 

“What? I’m serious! My parents were pretty into that!”

“Unbelievable.”

“Oh, c’mon, Rill.”

“We’re _scientists_. And you’re embarrassing.”

“YEAH, WELL, YOU’RE A ROBOT!”

She dismissed this. Maybe she was robotic, detached, shed of most intricacy, but it kept her life cleaner and simpler. She loved complications in her work - the rush that came from correcting nature, of manipulating it into her design. That was worthy of her skillset.

But the tedious emotions of everyone on board, namely her own, were beginning to muddle the only purpose she served her.

Even Hypher was beginning to lose sight of his ambitions.

“What do you think of Tashigi?” Hypher inquired for a quick change of topic. Rill hated it already. She didn’t like discussing girls with Hypher, but whether it was jealousy or a review of her own inadequacies, she didn’t delve long enough to know.

“Tashigi is likeable,” she replied carefully, measuring her few interactions with the woman. “She’s a little unsettled at times.”

“She’s tightly rung,” Hypher agreed. “So are you.”

“She’s so… friendly. I’m not friendly. Do you like her?”

“I’m… ambivalent towards her.” He eyed her for a moment. Hypher was always trying to analyze her now, ever since her confession the other day. When she thought she had exhausted his route, clearly, she had overstayed many times over.

“That’s too bad,” Rill noted aloud. “She seems too good for you.”

He frowned at her from his lazy sprawl. “Hey now! Why is she too good for me?”

“A twenty-something marine officer fighting for justice, at the start of her career. You don’t stand a chance,” Rill mused. 

“Y’know, Rill, I love you like the queen you are, but sometimes, you’re a heartbreaker,” he lamented, and reached for one of the small jars of uncoded specimens. More fucking algae by the looks of it.

* * *

After another battle with her insomnia led her into the lab room, the only room she could comfortably do as she pleased without the scrutiny of soldiers, Rill managed to finish her daily work before the morning crew even awoke. With their tests finalised, she took measure to safely dispose of the mermaid’s carcass, deciding that if she finished any possible work before Dr. Megalodon could suggest it, then he wouldn’t bother her with more trivial tasks. 

While the rest of the ship came alive, Rill exhausted herself to sleep, passing out in the empty bed free of Nora and her incessant cuddling. She slept three hours, then hid away reading from her text book, correcting the messy scrawl of her notes into readable, digestible script. She did all she could think of to avoid human interaction and meaningless intern activities, but still, she felt restless. Agitated. A nice hot bath would help soothe her, except it wasn’t Friday yet. She still had three days to wait.

Despite the fact that she knew the faucet would not be waiting for her, Rill walked towards the water closet anyway. Deciding she could wash up from the sink and at least remove the sticky residue of her earlier work from her flesh. She was rounding the corner of the hall when she noticed Smoker outside the door. 

The damned man never failed to catch her off guard.

He paused, catching sight of her as well. “I’m about to shower. If you need it, go now,” he barked at her.

She stood still, debating on whether it was even worth it now. He’d probably learn of her deceptive ways even if she was careful enough to clean up every last drop from the sink. 

So she tried for the sake of trying, leaning her head against the wall as she spoke. 

“Today, I smell like salt and formaldehyde. Let me bathe.”

Smoker’s dismissive shake lazed when he hung his neck; it dropped like it couldn’t bother his muscles to lift it any longer, and Rill hated him—hated him and his attitude and his nose so ragged by smoke that it seeped from his pores and likely no longer permitted him to differentiate between smells.

“Fine,” she said, brushing a few errant hairs from her eyes. “Then let me bathe with you.”

It’s a treat to catch him off guard, one that Rill knew to relish in the moment. Smoker’s shadowy brows dipped into a frown, his cigar once again threatening to collapse from his mouth.

“What?” But she knew he heard her; unless he rendered deaf in the last moment. What were the possibilities? 

So she pressed on.

“Let me bathe with you. That’ll give me two baths a week, and I’ll stop pestering you about your totalitarian methods.”

“Totalitarian methods,” he repeated flatly. Rill stood still, watching his face as it transformed into a bemused smile.

“After you,” he finally offered. She paused mid-step, having already shuffled her body back towards her room, expecting his curt refusal. He hadn’t refused.

And she hadn’t expected remittance.

“Okay,” she said, but the word came out shrouded with uncertainty. She wanted to test her legs, throw them forward and hurl herself into the tub, but it dawned on her that Smoker was massive. He exposed no chivalry to his form, and she couldn’t hope for any good to emerge from this situation. “Okay,” she repeated, swallowing thickly.

The captain stepped back, hugging the wall to expose the ajar door and propped against the floor was the faucet he’d removed from her courtesy.

“I mean it.” Could that be a threat? Let me bathe on my own or I’ll ruin your solitude?

“Either get in or piss off. I ain’t got all night.”

The decision was made. Rill turned her gaze to her destination, her fingers refusing to stumble as they reached for the hem of her uniformed polo shirt. She swept it off without concern of Smoker’s gaze behind her, and her pants crawled down her thighs soon after. Then the slippers went.

She gazed over her shoulder, catching Smoker watching her with his thick arms harboured across his chest.

“You should put the faucet on,” she commanded softly.

As the captain obliged, she removed the last of her foreign material—the white lingerie cast to the floor, exposing her to the artificial light above. Her tanned skin glowed like honey, unblemished from the daily soaks of the sun, except for the scars. White, ravenous marks crossed and dotted her skin, matting the flesh with ridged ripples, but none as prominent as the mangled scar ripped across her stomach. Stitched together with hurried hands, it hadn’t healed kindly—her stomach resembled a cratered wound, taken from a miraculous survival and a mark that reminded her daily of the weary nightmares that waited at bay.

She drew a finger down her scar, admiring the ridges like planted train tracks.

When she leveled her gaze, Smoker’s work was done. He stood in the tub, his gaze stretched across her form, swallowing her whole and yet he didn’t linger on her any differently than when she stood before him perfectly wrapped.

He didn’t rush her, didn’t demand that she step in, and as Rill approached the tub, his hands reached for her. She stopped, then he. The kindest mirror. “If you wanna change your mind—“

“No,” Rill whispered. “I’m trying to… move around...”

Smoker’s hands moved towards her again, but this time, she stood still. He carefully folded his fingers around her waist, buckling his arm to heave her up and over the edge of the tub. The porcelain floor cooled her feet, the smooth terrace easier to prod than the prickled wooden floors.

But she was naked, and Smoker was naked, and she hadn’t considered this scenario.

Hypher, yes. Law, many times. There were handsome men from her past who flitted through her thoughts and brought a scarlet rush across her bony cheeks, but Captain Smoker introduced himself as verboten, even in his half-nude glory when she’d tried to save him from a fire that never rose.

Wedged at his side, he wasn’t as much of a tower anymore. She was tall, too. Tall enough to grace his shoulder, which is more than Tashigi could accomplish. The petty officer only reached Rill’s nose.

Smoker, built of stifling exhaust and violent stares, had turned tangible under her boldness.

She moved for his hands still clinging to her waist, and they melted away from her skin. Just as quickly as she had fixated on him, Smoker turned away. White wisps of scar tissue massacred his back, far more decorated than her whole body. But he was paler than her; they could play hidden under the far scrutiny of someone’s gaze. Hers couldn’t.

“Watch out,” he grunted from the front, and the faucet exploded with harsh raindrops. All of his tampering with the faucet had ruined the gentle pressure she preferred, but she kept the complaint behind closed teeth. The shocking cool droplets relieved into a comfortable heat, and before she knew it, it was like the tub was hers alone. Rill massaged her scalp, collecting fists of hair under the stream and bundling them into a makeshift bun along her crown. Smoker’s hair rinsed fair quicker, but as she peered up at him, his eyes were trained on hers.

Just as she suspected, his white hair had collapsed around his face. “It’d be rude to kick me out now,” she said.

He reached over her head, resting his arm on the adjacent wall. “You look ready to run out of here on your own.”

“No. I don’t look like anything. I’m neutral.”

“You’re terrified, kid.”

She thought of their earlier flirtations - if they were such a thing. 

“I’m...” She nudged her bottom lip with her tongue. “I will not be running. Out of here. Okay?”

His arms started to move again, and as he lowered it to his side, he shoved a cloth wrapped around a bar of soap into her startled grasp. It was getting harder to match his gaze, so she turned away, concealing her face, concealing all of her from him. 

She supposed she was terrified. Not of him, certainly, but of just about everything else. Smoker was a manageable danger, not a predator. He wasn’t a pirate. He wasn’t a friend. He wasn’t anything besides an authority figure that reached far beyond her means. If he cut people into sizeable pieces, he did so from the opposite league of Kid’s morality. His intentions with her brother only posed a threat if he caught him—and for the past few weeks, his attempts couldn’t even snag a clue as to where Luffy had lunged.  
So no, she decided. “I’m not uncomfortable with you,” she said aloud. “You don’t bother me. You’re like a wall.”

“Sorry,” she added a moment after when Smoker remained silent. She turned away from him to lather her hands with shampoo, taking time to run her slick fingers through her matted turrets of long, black curls. She couldn’t tell if Smoker watched her work, but she hoped he did.

For some odd, peculiar reason, the idea of him so disinterested in her while they bathed together only put her on edge.

While she shampooed, Smoker washed up with a bar of soap. They took turns watching the other, neither of them really saying anything besides Rill’s soft apologies whenever she accidentally nudged him and Smoker’s grunted replies. She was massaging her scalp with conditioner when she felt something graze down the side of her hip. There was no way to tell if it had been purposeful or accidental, but when she arched back to steal a glance of him, his face was a breath away from hers. 

Rill could count on one hand the number of men outside of family who had seen her naked form. Smoker marked the fourth one, a navy militant her brothers had teasingly forbade her from.

But as Rill peered into those smokey, red hues, she decided she wanted to act first. This was all her decision, all of her interests and needs, and for once, she didn’t have to hear chatter or some condensed method of therapy to reach it. When she twisted around, Smokers hand descended to her hip, his fingers gently burrowing into her flesh. She leaned up to kiss him and he crushed her against him, stealing breaths and time as he kissed her with dizzying passion. 

Naturally, he tasted much like smoke. There was an edge to him, something woodsy except metallic, but very much natural. She couldn’t begin to pinpoint it. As they kissed, Smoker leveraged her against the wall of the bath, his fingers splayed across her hips while the other hand worked behind the nape of her neck. Where in the world was time when she wanted to explore every inch of him before it was over.  
And then, just like that, Smoker pulled away, redirecting his feverish kisses down her jaw before slipping along her throat. 

“Listen, kid-” sounding more like a grunt than actual words “-if you want me to stop, now’s the time.”

She practically breathed her reply, her fingers curling into the back of his head as she pulled him up to kiss her again. “Don’t stop,” she whispered, “ _just don’t stop_!”

Smoker needed no further invitation.

* * *

“I don’t care if you suddenly think I’m a slut or whatever.” 

Smoker glanced up at her - he was one of the few people she ever encountered who could make confusion blend so perfectly with anger.

“Why the hell would I think you’re a slut?”

“I don’t know,” Rill admitted. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she had committed some social faux pas by sleeping with the captain of the ship. 

“What I think,” he offered, and he wasn’t watching her this time as he spoke, making it impossible for him to catch her startled look, “is that the next time we do this it’s not gonna be in the damn shower.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Does the shower make you uncomfortable?”

The captain snorted. “It’s a waste of damn resources. We’re on a limited water reserve, kid. Next time we’re taking it to my bed.”

Next time. Rill fondled with this idea of next time. 

“If that pleases you,” she agreed solemnly.  

He glanced at her, his face contorted with… bemusement? Irritation? Reading his facial expressions was almost exhausting, nevermind her inability to properly identify his moods. 

“And you?” he asked her, his eyes flicking down her.

Rill couldn’t deny the smile that bloomed on her face. She couldn’t help but smile after their passionate moment in the shower. And this whole concept of next time - well, gosh. That was something worth smiling about.

“Next time,” she agreed. “I think your bed is much bigger than mine, anyway.”

“It is,” he replied brusquely, “and free of company.”

“I would struggle with another person involved. I can barely remember speech after-” She stopped herself. Flattering him made her want to blush, which she did, but it also summoned an embarrassing desire to hide her face. He kept looking at her, as if she were interesting to look at. As if he actually wanted to decipher her own perplexities. Maybe he could. Maybe he had an easier time piecing her together.

He looked at her with a half-smirk. It felt wrong to think of it as a smile. “Yeah? Me too.” 

It was impossible not to feel warm under the glory of his comments. They were so small, almost wordless, but she felt like she was floating. He managed to compliment her in the simplest, most unimpressive ways and still she felt desirable. Like neither of them could wait to reunite under his sheets again.

It was then that she decided two things: one, that no one would ever learn of her and Smoker. No matter how tempting it became, she would not share this experience with Hypher or any other set of ears. And secondly, that Smoker himself would never learn of how much she liked him. This could work if they were both mature and detached from the other. Just casual, private sex while he hunted down her brother and she finished her university expedition. In the end, they would split ways. 

“You coming?” Smoker asked, and her heart began to race against her breast as she realised he meant now.

“After you,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. She wanted to reach for his hand but didn’t. It’d be in direct violation of her second rule. 

A part of her, however small, couldn’t help but smile at the thought that Smoker himself was a bit of a rule breaker. And if things kept up - which they shouldn’t - she’d have a dangerous routine on her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Any thoughts, concerns, or constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated! You can find me on tumblr as persephica.


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not very fond of this chapter - it was very difficult to write but it's DONE, and I'm happy to have it out of the way even if I feel like it's a steaming pile of words. I'm still in desperate need of a beta-reader if anyone happens to be interested. You can also find me on tumblr as [persaphonc](http://persaphonc.tumblr.com/). Chapter 7 is almost composed so that should be coming out shortly (full disclosure: I'm working on it today and it should hopefully be up and running tonight, but we all know how terrible I am when it comes to updating).

Monkey D. Rill sat on the edge of Captan Smoker's sizeable bed, a contemplative look etched on her features. Naked with a faint glisten of sweat covering her tanned, honey skin, her eyes continued to flicker over to the other naked figure, free of sweat and the need to shuffle. Instead he stretched across the bed, perfectly at ease with himself while she continued to quietly fidget.

"Can I help you?" Smoker eventually snapped when he caught her curious stare.

"Sorry," she replied.

"Right. Cut it out."

Rill turned away from him, only to glance back quickly again. "I will, but we need to establish some finite ground rules. Irreversible, unbreakable, concrete rules."

"Sounds like a pain in the ass," Smoker played on, snorting at her as he propped a cigar on his bottom lip.

Rill considered that permission to continue. "I haven't carefully reviewed the documentation I signed with Mariejois University but I'm inclined to suspect they have strict views on fraternization with… clients."

"I'm not your client," he said. "It's not like you're fucking your professor."

Rill turned away, deciding that was a subject best left buried. "No, you certainly are not. I think it's safe to presume I wouldn't learn anything valuable under you."

Smoker looked at her as if she'd just slapped him, his eyes narrowed and unamused. Rill smiled in return. "That was a joke," she offered.

He eased up a bit, shaking his head as he took a long drag from the cigar. "You should tack on a warning with those."

"Says the man who's probably never laughed in his life."

"Har, har. Come back to bed."

Rill smiled at him over her shoulder. "About my rules… there's really only one rule."

"I get it," Smoker interrupted, running his thick fingers through his spiky, white peaks. He put out his cigar in the ashtray on the bedside table. "You want discretion. So do I, now would you come here?"

Rill broke from her hunched position on the edge of his bed, climbing over his legs and up his massive form until she could comfortably rest on his hips. His half-risen arousal prodded at the soft curls between her thighs, but Rill didn't take him inside of her. Instead she admired his petulant stare.

"There's no need to rush me," she said and braced her arms against his chest as she found a comfortable rhythm to rock into him. "Unless you're already getting tire-"

"Tired of your shit," he corrected, grabbing hold of her hips and tugging her forward, forcing her to crawl along his massive, contoured chest. A part of her envied how easily he ordered her around - how freely he unpeeled her and made her part of whatever fantasy was brewing in his thoughts. She wanted to do the same.

Smoker didn't stop urging her forward until she was directly over his mouth. He wasn't the first man to go down on her, but he was the first man to ever have her sit so intimately like this, where she could see the impatience in his eyes and the playful smirk before his mouth split apart for his tongue to emerge.

"Fuck," Rill moaned, her one hand slamming into the wall as he began to lick through her folds, finding nothing to grip onto but needing the support as she dropped against his mouth. Evidently, this couldn't be the first time Smoker held a woman at his mercy in such an open, visceral manner.

Her other hand fell into her hair, her fingers curling around her midnight strands as she began to rock against him, meeting his strokes with the same fevered tenacity.

Smoker gave no indication that he was planning to stop anytime soon. With one hand burrowed in her hip, the other slipped under her thigh, forcing her legs even further apart as his mouth hungrily sucked at her clit. He alternated between his energetic sucking and the tantalizing strokes of his tongue. Rill's moans came frequently and sharp, her breaths hitching and bottling until she released them in a throaty gasp. With one thigh pressed tightly against his face, the other was forced off to the side, allowing him room to change his direction at ease.

Her veins seemed to burst inside of her, filling her with eruptions of bliss and need - the harder she rocked against his face, the faster his mouth worked, until Rill could no longer concentrate on any pattern of strokes and teasing. She clamped harshly against him, a strangled sound crackling past her clenched teeth.

"Ahhh!" Crying out her frustration as he built her towards this enticing release, only to slow his work into a lazy, tormenting caress.

"Are you gonna cum for me?" he challenged, and chuckled when she clenched him with her thighs.

"Trying, fuck am I trying," she whispered back, knowing all too well that he was enjoying this game of stop and go.

Every few minutes he would devour her like she was this exquisite sample he couldn't consume fast enough, until she was on the edge of bursting with desire, and then his passion would recede. He'd lure her back down into a pleasant distraction and build her right back up to her threatening release. She could feel her frustration beginning to mount, the determination of seeking that finale he continued to deny her.

Reaching down to bury her fingers in his hair, Rill could no longer refuse the desperation coursing through her. "Stop. Don't stop," she rushed to correct. "Just please… stop fucking torturing me and let me-"

Her moan crept over her words, swallowing the last of her sentence. Tension locked in her legs as she began to writhe against him, so close to the sweet surrender of her bliss and as Smoker's lips wrapped around her clit, Rill came hard and fast, crying out his name as the balance threw her over the edge and drenched her in submission.

"You're a menace," she panted hoarsely, her eyes half closed as he gently guided her over to the side. She refused to meet his eyes as he leaned up on the bed - she could barely keep herself on her knees.

His hand went between her thighs, diving his fingers between her slick folds as his other hand lured her chin to meet his kiss of sweet vinegar and ash.

"Thanks for the snack. Now if you're ready… get on your stomach."

* * *

Smoker drifted to sleep first. They never discussed their sleeping arrangements together, but Rill collected her uniform from the floor, dressed quietly in the moonlight streaming through his unhinged porthole, and returned to the upper deck. The night staff paid her little mind as she wandered over to her secret hiding place behind the galley and planted her rear firmly on the platform jutting over the ocean. An impressive gust of wind could send her right into the sea, but Rill welcomed the threat. Her thoughts drifted between Luffy and Smoker, of the complications promising to surface should this continue.

She fought no guilt or shame for her impulsive rendezvous. Much like Law, it was simply another convenient distraction. When she worked for too long, when she committed her energies to an exhausting force like school or her brothers, the rest of her mind had a tendency to surrender to those goals. Rill would bury her mind in thoughts of nothing else, until she was desperate for a moment of lucidity, much like this.

Now, with her thoughts suspended from order, Rill thought back to the mermaid carcasses, the kraken's breath, the creature - allegedly a sea king - that had attacked her for hovering too close to its nest. There were strings stitching these events to one another, all emerging from a source she had yet to discover. The mermaids were vessels for the kraken's breath, not that she could prove the second had carried any but to assume he did at least generated a link for her to follow. And the creature that had attacked her - she couldn't see the claws that had sunk into her back, but they had poisoned her, left her with her dizzying aches and a plunging stomach. Even as she sat perfectly still, she could feel the threat of nausea warning her she would be sick shortly.

Neither Megalodon nor Vegapunk knew where kraken's breath came from. Typically it wasn't found in the confines of a corpse, but sold on the black market as an effective poison. If the Fishmen and merpeople were collecting it directly from krakens themselves… indeed, a revolutionary possibility.

Rill peered over the still waters and rose to her feet, deciding it was best to return to her room and feign sleep before her symptoms progressed. As she turned to enter the galley, a strange shadowed object appeared within her peripheral vision. Angling back, Rill made out the definitive shape of a ship maybe a few hundred yards away from their course. Immediately, her stomach tightened.

Hurrying out of the galley, Rill caught the arm of the nearest Marine and asked him for his monocular, relieved when he made no fuss and simply handed it over. Bringing the gold brass scope up to her eye, Rill leveled it until she could see the ship perfectly within her vision - and much like the night only a few weeks before, she could find no trace of life aboard the ship.

Frowning, Rill walked to the edge of the ship, leaning over the rail until it prodded into her chest. She surveyed the entire main deck, then the ratlines and the crow's nest. She glanced over the vast, white sails and the flapping flag - notably a civilian flag - but could not unveil a glimpse of life anywhere.

"Excuse me," she called out, waving to the Marine who lent her his monocular. He looked impatient as he approached her. "That ship out there-" she paused to indicate the ship some hundred yards from them - "seems to have no trace of life on board."

"It's possible it's a ghost ship," the Marine admitted as he glanced over the horizon.

"I thought so too. Shouldn't you investigate?" Rill asked.

"The Captain is pretty intent on this course. Did you see anything suspicious on board? Debris? Blood?"

Rill shook her head. She found no dark pools on the floor boards or even rips on the sails.

"This isn't the first one I've seen at night," Rill said, thinking back to the night the captain rescued her from her foolishness.

The Marine nodded. "Sometimes storms or even Sea Kings can take out entire crews."

Rill frowned and offered him his monocular back. "No, it's nothing like that. If you just take a look, it's almost as if everyone vanished."

At her behest, the Marine reluctantly scanned the horizon before bringing the monocular up to his eye, nodding as he looked through. After a moment, he put it away. "I can see it, but there's not much I can do without Captain Smoker's orders. And I'm not going to wake him from his sleep in the middle of the night over a matter that might not even be pressing. I see no signs of distress, doctor."

"I'm not a doctor," Rill corrected him, frustrated as she glanced back with her natural eyes. "Thank you for your time," she murmured, before deciding it wasn't a battle worth fighting. Her forehead was starting to drum with the threat of another headache, and all the standing was making her nauseous again.

Rill returned to her bunk, for once free of Nora, and slept for two and a half hours.

* * *

Smoker acted different around her. It was noticeable and terrible and Rill found herself admiring it more than she cared to admit. He was softer in his approach now, no longer consumed by disdainful grimaces and sharp barks. She couldn't ascertain whether his crew or hers took notice - and Rill could only hope they remained jovially ignorant - but she found the captain's temper vacant and his manners cordial. He was the same tangible force she discovered in the bathroom.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked him, keeping her voice lowered in case their conversation could be overheard. They were alone by the wheel, and while not even Tashigi hovered nearby, Rill wanted to maintain a cautious objective.

"I slept," he answered. Whatever that means. "You don't look like you did."

"A handful of hours," Rill admitted. "But I've never been one to sleep for very long."

Smoker nodded, though for his credit, he had already witnessed some of this. "I would've had another twenty minutes but we got some intel on the pirate I'm hunting."

Rill's heart felt discorded and punctured as she peered up at Smoker. She kept her face strained, unreadable, her tone absent of any enthusiasm or interest. "Oh. What sort of intel?"

"Strawhat and his crew apparently tore through a market over in Chantara. We're going to investigate."

"Tore through as in?"

"There were four deaths and 9 injured, nevermind all the property damage."

Rill frowned - she couldn't stop herself, it stole all of her resolve not to tell him that that didn't sound like Luffy at all. Smoker must have interpreted her frown as mortification because he never appeared angry or suspect.

"That's… terrible," she said flatly. Whatever was happening, no part of her believed Luffy could be involved. She knew her brother too well to believe in such an atrocity, and Luffy - her wonderful, exuberant, insatiable, gold-hearted brother was not a boy for butchery. Destruction of property? Certainly. Death? Impossible.

"It's surprising. He wasn't one for carnage back in Loguetown. Something's up, and I don't like it," he admitted to her.

Rill nodded, oddly relieved that the captain mimicked her reflections, despite his determination to cuff her brother. She dove for the available distraction, hoping to steer off topic. "I've never heard of Chantara - what's it like?"

Smoker accepted her bait. "It's an agricultural town, built on bamboo rafts and walkways. It's something else."

"I've never seen a city built on water. I'm intrigued," Rill said, offering up a small smile. Every conscious part of her hoped that Luffy had eluded authorities and returned to his voyage. She wanted to find the nearest Den Den Mushi and verify, but she knew nothing about Chantara and doubted she could get a hold of her brother without outting their kinship.

Hypher mentioned days before that he was listening in on the scanner - perhaps she could divulge and scrutinize something of value through that. Rill scanned the main deck, searching for her colleague and found no inkling of him anywhere.

"Sorry, it's time for me to get to work," she said to Smoker, who merely nodded.

As she descended the stairs that led into the main deck, a violent surge lunged the ship sideways. Rill crashed into the rail, her side splintering with pain but not even the railing could contain her as she flipped over it, falling towards the ocean. Rill saw the cerulean surface and closed her eyes, waiting for the salty spray to envelop her until something strong snaked around her waist. She groaned from her sudden suspension in the air, feeling the ache and bruises already developing around her ribs. It took what little focus she had to turn around, and Rill couldn't suppress her relief to see Smoker was the one who had caught her.

But not even he was the same. The lower half of his body had transformed into smoke, allowing him to arc over the edge of the ship and retrieve her. Rill had heard the whispers of Smoker's legend whilst on the ship but had never seen such an alteration in person before. Luffy's stretching ability never transformed parts of his body like this.

Smoker carefully brought her down onto the main deck, his eyes too rushed to remain on her as he watched the commotion on board. Panicked shouts engulfed them.

"What was that?"

"Did we hit a reef?"

"WE HIT SOMETHING, CAPTAIN!"

"I don't see anything!"

"Get below," Smoker ordered her quietly and released her waist. The smoke disappeared as it collected all at once to form his legs again.

Rill nodded, but she hadn't walked three steps before the ship soared sideways again. Rill fell right back into Smoker, who was strong enough to brace his feet and not slide backwards. His arm elongated into a stream of smoke, this time collecting four of his soldiers as they threatened to fall into the ocean. Rill could hear panicked shouts from below and realised some of the men had already fallen overboard.

"Alright, this is starting to piss me off," Smoker snarled. "HIT THE DECK!"

No one wasted time as the captain's voice bellowed above the frustrated chorus of his men. Even Rill dropped to her stomach and crawled across the floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever they had hit. She could hear the heavy booted feet of Marines charging up the stairs from the hull. Many of the soldiers yelled at them to hit the floor as they first came up, but the entire ship was shrouded in confusion and panic. Only Smoker seemed intent and focused - he manipulated the smoke to propel him above the ship, allowing him what Rill could only assume was better surveillance.

And then, they all saw it. A massive, teal tentacle, about as thick as a dinghy and long as a mast pole rose from the water, and slammed into the quarter deck, splintering the wood and severing the top of it off. Everyone gazed in horror as a massive head emerged from the water, accompanied by at least three more tentacles and flaring nostrils. Its pale suckers puckered before the tentacles slammed into the ship, hitting several soldiers and destroying more of the ship in the process. It was pandemonium at its fullest, and Rill could hardly convince her legs to stand as the ship veered sharply forward, towards the cephalopodic monster's open mouth of sharp, jagged teeth.

Smoker wasted no time engaging in combat. Other ground soldiers aimed their guns and fired at the beast, obviously not concerned that they would strike their captain as the bullets soared through him, as if he truly were nothing but smoke. Smoker retrieved his jitte from his back and stabbed the creature in one of its black, soulless eyes. The monster screamed its rage, a high pitched, wrangled sound that caused nearly half of the men to cover their ears. Smoker struck at it again and again, but even from her position, Rill could see on his face that his attacks failed to truly maim the monster.

Rising to her feet, Rill avoided the debris scattered across the deck and returned to the edge of the ship to help tie ropes for the fallen soldiers to climb aboard again. She remembered knots from when her grandfather taught her, and easily fastened five lines within a handful of minutes before another lunge from a tentacle swept her off her feet and collided her into the front of the ship. Her head drummed with pain, she had a heartbeat of pure ache resonating in her skull, but Rill didn't utter a sound as she fought to gather her senses. Stumbling back onto her feet and ignoring the blood that dripped down the side of her head, Rill tried to reach the stairs to the hull. Several soldiers surrounded their cannons now, aiming for the creature and firing without any fear that they would strike their leader.

A cannon ball soared through Smoker and dived right into the creature's side, igniting his furious scream. While Smoker's jitte had irritated it when it delved into its eye, Rill buckled to her knees at the pitch of its enraged wail.

The scream lasted seconds before Rill could lift her head again, watching as Smoker dropped his jitte and began delivering powerful blows to the creature, aiming at its eyes and head. The tentacles continued to constrict around the ship, pulling them toward its open maw, but its focus was solely on Smoker at this point. Realising that there was little else she could do, Rill ran for the stairs to the hull, ignoring the violent spasms along her skull and terrible nausea that threatened to send her back to her knees.

She took the stairs two at a time and ran to the laboratory room where she found her confused professors huddled around. Numerous beakers lay broken on the floor, strewn with many of their utensils and trays, but Rill ignored everything and ran to the locked storage cabinet where they kept many of their chemicals.

"RILL! What the hell is going on?" Isamu barked at her.

"There's a monster attacking the ship," Rill answered just as loudly as she began to gather key components for her cocktail. Another violent surge sent her falling into the cabinet, but Ril ignored her scrapes and bruises and stood back up again, determined to make her concoction before the monster swallowed them whole.

"Anything I can do to help?" Hypher shouted to her.

Rill shook her head - she moved over to the island in the centre of the room and laid out her chemicals before grabbing an unbroken beaker. "Grab me a cloth?" she shouted back.

She didn't see the smile that bloomed on her colleague's face, too distracted from pouring the ingredients and hoping that the molotov cocktail would work. She knew everyone realised her intent - no one crowded her as she worked, and she could already predict Isamu's warning before he even issued it.

"Don't light that thing until you're about to throw it," he said and handed her the desired cloth. Rill stuffed it through the top and ran out the door, taking careful measure to hold it out in front of her and instantly dropping to the floor the moment she felt the ship start to sway again. It took her only a minute to return to the deck - the creature had screamed again during this time and she knew more of the ship was breaking, but Smoker didn't lessen his blows until she screamed up to him.

"SMOKER! TAKE THIS!"

She stood near the back of the ship, her arm extended as she held up the molotov cocktail and waited for Smoker to notice her. He did - his hearing was exceptional - and though Rill wasn't sure she could throw very far, she took aim and sent it barreling his way, relieved when he easily caught it with the aid of his smoke. She needn't explain anything to him - he pulled his lighter from his pocket, lit the cloth, and ordered everyone to hit the deck. Rill rolled onto her stomach once more and heard the force of the blast as the chemicals ignited into a powerful blaze. She lifted her head and saw the creature immersed in flame, screaming and thrashing wildly. It's tentacles released the ship and it veered backward, away from them, before submerging into the wild. As quickly as the creature had appeared, it retreated back into the bright blue ocean.

* * *

Rill awoke alone in Smoker's bed. She could smell the smoke and ash embedded in his sheets, as well as a familiar, more lively aroma of smoke in the air. When she turned around, she found Smoker. He was sucking back on two fat cigars and wearing only a grey pair of briefs. She swallowed the sight of his rippled abdomen, his long thick arms bulging with muscle and strength. He was watching her too, an expressionless stare on his face as she leaned up on the bed and with rubbed at her sleep-matted eye.

"Good evening, captain," she greeted quietly, after glancing out the window and realising it was dusk.

"Smoker," he corrected her. "I let women who stand naked in my tub call me Smoker."

She smiled then, battling the urge to wince as her face throbbed with pain.

"How long have you been awake?" she asked.

"Twenty minutes give or take," he replied. "You snore when you sleep."

She laughed then. "You should hear my brothers," she remarked before she realised her error. "They sound like a pair of raging beasts!"

"How many brothers?" he asked. She didn't meet his eyes, but she could tell from the casualty of his tone that he suspected nothing.

"Three," she answered honestly. "One died when we were children."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Rill shrugged. "It was a very long time ago." She could recall what Sabo looked like, how she felt around him, but she could no longer hear his voice in her head.

"Do you have any siblings?" she inquired curiously, desperate to distract herself.

Smoker shook his head. "No. Folks are dead, too. It's just me."

Just him. Smoker, the man who fought sea monsters toe to toe and had no one to call his own. She smiled at him, realising in the last few days alone it had become easier to like him.

"I take it our reinforcements have yet to arrive?"

"In about another hour. We've told them to err on the side of caution. Don't know if that thing is dead or not."

Rill nodded. "That creature shouldn't have noticed us. The seastone should have prevented this attack."

"It didn't react at all to the seastone," Smoker said.

"It's not a Sea King, then," Rill said, and realised this was not the first time she had spoken such words in a matter of days.

"We were on a calm belt, it could've-"

Rill shook her head. "There are a number of varieties of Sea Kings, and I've studied all of them. That wasn't a Sea King, Smoker. I'm sure of it."

Smoker leaned forward in his chair and nodded. Rill couldn't help but smile again at his small gesture of agreement.

"I should probably leave before people start wondering where I am," she murmured. "Thank you for letting me sleep in your bed - it was much more comfortable than the crew bunks."

"I'll be heading out too. If I don't keep an eye on the crew, they're gonna start panicking. I don't have time to correct every idiot's mistake while we're stranded," he said.

He stood up and threw on some pants as she carefully crawled out from under the sheets. Rill suffered a terrible gash to the side of her head that was neatly dressed and stitched thanks to Nora's expert hands. Her head pounded softly then vibrantly then gently again - all in a cycle she could hardly attune to, and Rill noticed how sluggish and weak she felt standing up again. She thought a few hours of rest would negate the worst effects of whatever neurotoxin currently streamed through her, but the attack only aggravated it.

"Take care of yourself," he said to her as she wobbled out of the room. Rill merely waved back at him. She crept through the hallway and threw herself back into the commotion of chatter and busying bodies as everyone tried to stay afloat and wait for their rescue to arrive. The ship was in no condition to get them to Chantara, so Smoker had contacted reinforcements to come down from Iokra to pick up the crew.

She went to the laboratory, their one room that had survived. Their two bunk rooms were scraps of wood and debris now; inside she found all of her professors and Hypher seated around the island.

"Isamu just went looking for you, couldn't find you anywhere," Hypher told her as she plopped down onto a stool.

"Sorry. I only woke up a few minutes ago - I came as soon as I could see straight enough."

"Well, it doesn't appear that you have a concussion, though I'm concerned about your headaches," Dr. Megalodon said.

Rill tried not to meet Hypher's levelled look and failed.

"The nausea is getting better," she lied, and wiped at the small layer of sweat sticking to her forehead.

"Let's hope you're on the mend now, Miss Monkey."

Rill absently corrected him - "it's Miss Rill" - and suddenly remembered what awaited her in Chantara. She glanced over at Hypher, barely paying attention to what the professors were exclaiming until she realised they were trying to get her attention.

"You're certain that it wasn't a Sea King attack?" Isamu cornered her. She could detect the skepticism in his tone let alone his concerned expression.

Rill shook her head. "I'm certain it wasn't any Sea King recorded by mankind," she said.

"There's over six hundred species of Sea Kings, Rill, and many of them have cephalopod characteristics."

"I agree with you," Rill said. "But none of them are immune to the effects of seastone. This beast knew exactly what it was targeting, unlike Sea Kings that would either not notice the ship or have some means of hesitation. And ignoring its behaviour altogether, it's characteristics don't match with any known Sea King."

A part of her withheld the information that was floating near the tip of her tongue. She recognized the absurdity of it without needing to mention it aloud. Her professors appeared doubtful as she spoke, and in a matter of a minute, Rill stopped trying. She didn't have the fight in her today, the energy to prove herself to those who weren't inclined to listen. She turned to Hypher and when his eyes finally met hers, gestured towards the door. The two of them excused their professors and went to Rill's private spot behind the galley.

"Something tells me you have a hunch," Hypher said once they were alone and walking up the stairs.

"I think it was a lesser form of a kraken," she told him bluntly.

His eyes widened. "A kraken hasn't been seen in hundreds of years, Rill."

She didn't disagree with him but merely nodded. "When my brothers and I lived in Foosha Village, my grandfather sent me Archibald's '590 Species and Habitats of Sea Kings Around the Globe'. I read it over and over. It was one of my favourite text books because Luffy absolutely adored the illustrations of Sea Kings. He wanted to fight them all, so he would practice - I would describe their predatory routines and Luffy would battle pretend Sea Kings. I know them all, Hypher. Every single one."

"Show off," he said.

"Hypher."

He stuck his tongue out at her and shrugged. "So it's not discovered yet, maybe. Possibly." But Hypher didn't sound certain of his resolve.

"A kraken isn't a mythical beast, it's an extinct one. What if past scientists were wrong?" She continued to press.

"Then why has there been no recovery or contact until now?"

"How do you know there hasn't? We all nearly died today. Smoker was incredible, he was so strong dealing blow after blow yet he had such little effect on this monster. I'm telling you, Hypher - it wasn't ordinary. The molotov cocktail worked, it drove it off, but without it I'm certain we would have died."

Hypher was quiet for several minutes as they made the rest of their journey to Rill's secluded spot. They sat on the platform and allowed their legs to hang and swing from the edge of the ship.

"I don't know," he finally managed to piece together. "I don't know, it sounds incredible… I mean, if it's real, you have your doctoral thesis right there. But you're sick, Rill. Your observations don't hold the same weight as, say, me. Or the professors. You have headaches, you can barely walk on your feet, and I know you sleep for a couple hours a night before calling it quits. You're not at your normal capability and as much as I'm here to cheer you on… I don't know if we can trust your word on this."

She watched him closely, struggling to find the words to defend herself, but Hypher's pitying gaze left her cold and silent.

"I think your brain is playing tricks on you right now. Give yourself a few days to heal. Feel better, and then come back to this. There's no rush, Rill. We're not going anywhere."

His words were probably meant to come across as endearing but Rill found him painfully patronizing. She turned away from him to watch the ocean, absently nodding her head if only to end the discussion altogether.

Not even Hypher believed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a completely unrelated note, is anyone else keeping up with the current isssues of One Piece? Charlotte Katakuri is fine af.


	8. Chapter Seven

“What kind of prick promises he’ll be here at six and doesn’t pick up his snail transponder despite Smoker calling like a recently dumped, hysterical ex?” Hypher growled.

Tashigi looked taken aback by his foul language, a weathered expression Rill could only assume she used frequently with Smoker as well.

“Perhaps that sea king-”

“Not a sea king,” Rill interrupted.

“Sure, perhaps that monster got to Commodore Saros,” Tashigi said, her brows bowed under worry.

Rill merely shook her head. “The cocktail was effective. The Kraken won’t be attacking any more ships today,” she murmured vaguely.

“Rill’s now besties with the monster,” Hypher joked. He still didn’t host any faith in her suggestions, but he was no longer taunting her by referring to it as a sea king in her presence.

“A Kraken is not a sea king, not a monster that can be fooled by seastone. It is a predator that crosses the ocean unlike any other,” Rill recited as if she were reading from scripture. Hypher met her gaze and tilted his chin at her, but she only turned away.

“I think the captain is going to reach out to Iokra if they don’t get here soon,” Tashigi continued, trying to formulate a plan amongst the three of them, but Rill couldn’t spare her thoughts from their tireless search for answers. She kept picturing that Kraken and it’s massive, puckered suckers, teal and slamming through the ship like a pencil through wet paper. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Hypher said. Rill glanced up to see his eyes fixated on the horizon, a golden glow awash with mango and pink hues.

“How come?” Tashigi asked.

“Because they’re here,” Rill guessed and glanced over her shoulder to see the outline of a ship several hundred feet in the distance. A pang in her gut made her reflect on the ghost ships she found in these waters, but both had been in the middle of the night. It became apparent in a matter of minutes that the ship was heading towards them.

“I better go and receive my orders,” Tashigi announced to them before taking off. Hypher followed her stroll towards the captain, his eyes never leaving her backside. Rill crossed her arms.

“She’s not interested in you.”

Hypher grinned as he stretched his arms behind his head and grinned. “She doesn’t even know interest is on the table. Give it time. I like a slow burn.”

“You’re enamored, Hypher - and once again, out of your league.”

“You’re just mean when you’re sickly, Rill.”

“I try to be mean for any occasion.”

They salvaged what supplies they could - Hypher, Isamu, and Raymond had packed up what remained of their laboratory, but for the most part, everyone’s personal effects were destroyed in the attack. She would miss her small collection of bounties that included Luffy, Ace, her father, and Law, but knew such papers were easily replaced.

Within twenty minutes, the late Commodore Saros greeted Captain Smoker and Petty Officer Tashigi while the Iokra crew assisted with the supplies. Nobody made Rill carry anything likely due to the injuries she sustained during the attack, but she kept close to Hypher and Dr. Meg, determined to prove to the both of them that there was nothing feasibly wrong with her.

As they wandered onto the deck of the new ship, Saros extended his fat hand to the towering captain only for Smoker to disregard it completely.   

“Sorry, sorry!” Saros boomed for everyone to hear. He was a portly man who stood only an inch or two taller than Rill herself. “The mainline has a stronger connection than the others. The wife and I like to talk when I’m far from Iokra. But we’re here now! Here to rescue the famous White Hunter Smoker.”

Rill watched under a veil of wonder as Smoker rolled his eyes at his superior. “Thanks,” he practically snarled, before stepping onto the plank and crossing over to Saros’s ship. Tashigi tagged behind him, followed by her professors. Rill and Hypher looked at each other before Hypher extended his hand, offering for her to step ahead of him.

“And you have civilians on board! My, Smoker, you’ve been busy today it seems.”

“Dr. Megalodon and his people are research scientists from Mariejois University; they’re here under the command of Vice Admiral Garp. You got a problem with it, take it up with him.”

“V-Vice Admiral Garp? The Fist? Must be some research,” Saros commented, his eyes surveying their small staff. He hovered on Dr. Meg the longest.

Rill turned away as her lips lifted with pride.

“I can identify over 600 types of algae now,” Hypher whispered to her ear.

Rill rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to prove it to you? I can start listing each and every Sea King. How about we start with the one that nearly ate my brother? Now that’s a good story.”

Hypher hushed her. “I’m not making fun of you, I’m commenting on that fact that Dr. Meg has nothing better to do while he hoards all of the weather research to him, Isamu, and Raymond while we’re left cleaning Smoker’s ship.”

“Could take a turn for the worse,” Rill mused.

“How so?”

“Saros could have us start on his unsightly barnacles,” Rill suggested.

“I don’t wanna go anywhere near that guy’s barnacles.”

After everyone had migrated onto the ship, they left their old ship to float, another ghost ship to join the mounds of them Rill was beginning to identify. At least theirs featured some sort of carnage to explain to any passerby's what transpired – Rill could still find no rhyme or reason to the two ghost ships she had found on the calm belt.

“So – take me through this again. What exactly…. what do you believe… what happened, Captain Smoker?”

Smoker closed his eyes, his forehead pinching as he scowled at Saros. “We were on course for Chantara when our ship got seized by some sort of… monster.”

“Are you trying to tell me you were attacked by a sea king?” He appeared delighted as he waited while Smoker sucked back on his cigars.

“That’s one theory,” Smoker agreed.

“It was a Kraken,” Rill piped up.

“And that’s the other,” Smoker said.

Isamu released a long, aggravated sigh. “It’s not a Kraken, Rill. They’re extinct.”

“That’s one theory,” Rill said, repeating Smoker’s words.

“It’s a fact. There hasn’t been a documented sighting of a Kraken-“

“Until today,” Rill finished for him.

Isamu curled his fists, looking ready to hurl one into the side of the ship. “Do you realise how ridiculous you sound? Enough, rookie. It was a damn sea king.”

“Whatever it was,” Smoker interrupted, his eyes hovering on Rill for a moment before he glanced at Isamu, “doesn’t really concern me. The kid helped drive the monster off.”

“Are you saying you were rescued by a research scientist, Captain Smoker? Oh dear… you might be losing your touch. Loguetown has clearly diminished some of that Smoker brand of fealty.”

Rill scowled in defense of Smoker. “It was a Molotov cocktail. Children could make it with the right ingredients,” she said quickly.

“It was fast thinking,” Smoker said.

“It was eleventh-grade chemistry.”

He turned away from her as Saros addressed him.

Hypher leaned forward, whispering while the two were distracted. “You didn’t attend high school, did you?”

Rill shook her head.

“Kinda what I figured. Congrats – you earned praise from Smokey.”

“Do not call him Smokey,” she whispered, already imagining the sort of irritation that would surface if Smoker overheard such a nickname.

“Regardless, captain, we’ll reach Chantara by nightfall. Feel free to be on the surveillance for your… monster,” Commodore Saros said. Rill couldn’t understand the root of his disdain, but despite how annoyed she assumed Smoker must be by now, the captain merely brushed Saros’ tormenting aside.

Rill watched as he instructed Tashigi and a few other senior officers to aid the Saros crew by whatever means necessary. Meanwhile, Dr. Megalodon had them stroll to the bow of the ship where they tried to keep out of the soldiers’ way.

Since confessing to Hypher that she was almost certain the creature that attacked them was a lesser Kraken, Rill refused to fall silent despite his lack of support. Smoker appeared ambivalent by her findings, while Tashigi was entirely neutral. Her professors kept attempting to correct her, but Rill pushed back defiantly, tired of their concern for her well-being and inability to consider her findings.

Rill parked her ass on the railing and waited. It would be another few hours until they reached Chantara.

* * *

The city of Chantara floated on water, a unique composition of wooden rafts and log huts. The buildings didn’t bob as aggressively as Rill thought they might, but she could only assume they were anchored down. Every building had its own port filled with schooners and ships, but Captain Saros’s massive military ship dwarfed them all. They were bigger than the largest building notable by its gold brass scales depicted in the centre of the roof -- the justice building.

Rill looked around, searching for the carnage Smoker warned she would find. She had to borrow another monocular before she spotted the floating debris of once what boasted a lively market. Mercher goods and bright red fabrics floated between the wooden pathways, the wood as badly splintered as the ship they had left behind. Rill was relieved not to find any of the bodies - not that she expected to, but the possibility made her stomach constrict until she was nauseous.

“I have to tell you something,” she murmured to Hypher, realising they had nowhere to go to start a private conversation. The two of them merely stepped back from the professors and tried to avoid the bustle of the crew on deck.

“You’re going to let the professors oversee your treatment?” he asked, hovering by the rat lines. 

Rill shook her head. “Smoker told me he’s here to find Luffy. That Luffy destroyed the market here and killed a handful of people.”

“That doesn’t sound like something your brother would do.”

“It isn’t. Luffy doesn’t have a taste for murder.”

“He’s a pirate.”

Rill frowned at his antipathy. “He’s an adventurer, not a murderer.”

Hypher shrugged and rolled his shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension in his stiff joints. “Well. Assuming your brother’s still here, I guess you can ask him about it.”

“My brother won’t be here.”

“You should prepare for the possibility that you’re going to find him in shackles.”

“Then I will break him free,” Rill snapped back.

Hypher’s smile crumbled from his face. His next words followed in a harsh whisper. “Don’t be stupid. Smoker would know immediately. You’d lose your scholarship and get arrested!”

“He’s my brother.”

“And he killed innocent people, Rill!” He raised his voice, and Rill felt her throat swell over her words.

“You don’t know anything,” she scoffed at him, finally turning away.

Rill’s footsteps led her to the only person she expected not to console her or talk down to her. She stared at Smoker’s strained expression, privately hoping it wasn’t for her. But when she leaned against the railing beside him, he turned his head to blow the smoke away from her.

“Your professors don’t agree with your Kraken theory,” he finally spoke first. His hand rested lazily on the hem of his black trousers.

“That’s one of the last things I want to discuss right now,” she replied softly, unable to tear her eyes away from him. “Let me anticipate the wonderful, hot, bubble bath I’ll be having this evening.”

He snorted. “You would trust a hotel bathtub?”

“Smoker, don’t even start. It’s the only thing I have to look forward to. I need to hold faith that they properly clean them.”

“Don’t get lost this time,” he reminded her, a smirk forming at the end of his words.

“I wasn’t lost! I was intoxicated when I passed out on a barrel of hay. I only had to head south to find the harbour again.”

“You just sleep anywhere?” he asked, looking at her incredulously.

“I had a strange upbringing,” she admitted, smiling back at him. “Monsters, remember?”  

When she looked up again, Smoker was still watching her, his stare no longer tight but relaxed. She would almost describe it as amused. “You’re an unusual kid.”

She hated that he had words that could tug a smile out of her. It seemed dangerous to equip him with such ammunition.

“I guess I won’t see you for a few days,” she murmured more quietly.

“If you run off on  _ me _ -“

“No,” she interrupted, hoping he didn’t notice the shiver that rippled through her. “I don’t intend to get lost again. I meant…” She trailed off, realising this was a delicate matter to reference with so many sets of ears nearby.

She stared at Smoker, willing him to collect her train of thought.

He pulled his cigars from his mouth. “There’s a tub in my room,” he said coyly, his red hues burning with inclined interest.  

She felt a heat ignite across her cheeks and dropped his gaze to eye the crow’s nest. Her entire face glowed red with ashamed longing.

“I’ll leave a key with the front desk. So, come – you always do.”

Rill forced her legs to move, feeling the prickle of heat and sweat pool at the nape of her neck. She felt raw in his presence, so tempted by his invitation that if he’d suggested it, she could have let him have her in a closet down below. Instead, she couldn’t answer him, couldn’t get her tongue to stop sweeping the entirety of her mouth. Her fingers fidgeted restlessly with her belt and she had a strong inkling that his eyes watched her from behind.

Rill hung back from everyone as they docked, following her professors only when they traipsed down the plank. She liked the unusual, wooden platforms that served as walkways in Chantara. It was a sizeable community that stretched well beyond her realm of sight, yet carried the coziness of a small town. While resembling nothing of Foosha Village, the atmosphere posed friendly.

Everyone gathered outside the hotel, most of the Marines heading inside while Saros hung back to observe Smoker.

“What’s your business in Chantara?” he asked. Rill couldn’t believe he had only decided at the last moment to question Smoker’s objective in the floating city.

“I’m looking for a pirate named Strawhat,” Smoker answered with his strained displeasure. “I have an appointment with the local authorities.” She observed as he tried to circumvent Saros, Tashigi trailing closely behind him.

Saros seized a hold of Smoker’s shoulder, halting him from his stride. He was a good six inches shorter than Smoker, nowhere near the might of the lower ranked captain, and though the Commodore clearly felt in control, Rill was amazed to see the glint of threat in Smoker’s eyes.

“Touch me again, and you’ll lose your arm,” he said.

Saros gaped at him while the teachers tried to usher her inside.

“Let’s leave the Marines to their business,” Dr. Megalodon urged.

Rill disregarded him in favour of the furious captain. A murmur of pride gripped her as she watched Smoker stand his ground.

“Did you just…  _ threaten _ me…. Captain?” Saros clipped his words, his own fury evident as his hand clutched at the sword hanging from his belt. Rill could see a vein pulsing on his thick neck. 

Smoker took what remained of his cigars from his mouth and flicked them into the water. “Is it a threat? Sure. Call it a threat, call it a goddamned promise, call it whatever the fuck you like. Strawhat isn’t escaping me this time, and an idiot like you is only gonna compromise that. Go wherever the hell you like but stay out of my way!”

At the end of his final word, Smoker motioned for Tashigi to follow him and headed east in the direction of the justice building. Rill glanced back at her professors, finally following them inside, under no interest to listen to Saros’s humiliated sniping.

Once inside, they gathered in the lobby while Isamu reserved their rooms, sectioning the pairs off as Dr. Meg and himself, Raymond and Hypher, and Nora and Rill. The young prodigal intern waited impatiently to be dismissed, paying them little mind as Dr. Megalodon reiterated that they were to reconvene in the lobby at six o’clock the following morning. While he had no interest in how they spent their free time, his eyes narrowed on Rill as he emphasized that they were not, under any circumstances, to tarnish the reputation of the university by associating with pirates.

“Unless it’s my brother,” Rill agreed.

Isamu glared at her. “Did you not hear what he just said?”

“But Luffy is my brother-“

“And a criminal, the very one our impatient captain is hunting down at this very moment. He’s gonna find out, Rill, Meg and I have been discussing it and we think we should come clean about it.”

“That’s not your story to tell,” Rill said hotly, not sure she was prepared to end what little foundation of a relationship she had with Smoker so soon. “It’s not you coming clean, it’s me jeopardizing the mutual respect Smoker and I have finally reached and then what? What happens the next time you want me to play the role of persuasion? Is Hypher going to be his new messenger?”

“Hypher would like to remain uninvolved,” her fellow intern piped in quietly.

“Stay away from your brother, Rill,” Isamu warned. “If you don’t want Captain Smoker to know, then fine. But you are a civilian and you can be tried for aiding and abetting pirates. Don’t think your excuse of family will protect you from that. And Smoker’s not the kind of guy who will let you get away unscathed.”

Rill’s face crumpled in confusion. She had taken their previous complacency for granted. Rill had hoped that they would remain ambivalent toward her relationship with Luffy, but could see that such contentment had expired.

“Alright,” she agreed softly, after another few moments of deliberation. “I won’t see him.”

“Please, Miss Monkey… for your own safety, try not to get into any trouble today,” Dr. Meg pressed gently.

Rill looked away from all of them, nodding her head as she turned towards the door. She knew she wouldn’t seek out Smoker lest he clued into her sudden interest in his pursuit of justice. She would leave Luffy to fate.

At least, she would allow them to believe such a farce.

* * *

Rill avoided the justice building as much as she longed to tag along and see for herself the culprits of yesterday’s massacre. Instead, she visited the local taverns, searching for tales of what transpired from the citizens, figuring someone would be able to identify Luffy based on her descriptions.

What she never expected was to come across a tall, lanky, bronze-skinned man lounging, once more, at a bar, his fingers curled lazily around a mug as he drank. She smiled as he met her eyes. He waved to her breezily, as if he expected her to turn the other way, but Rill approached her target with unabashed curiosity.

“It’s very strange to run into you again,” she greeted him. “How are you, Law?”

Trafalgar Law started at her waist and took his time meeting her eyes again “If you’re here to warn me about Marines again…”

“They’re here,” she warned him anyway. She couldn’t stop herself – the idea of Smoker and Law meeting caused a tightening in her stomach. Besides, it wouldn’t look good for the Marines to learn of Dr. Megalodon’s unwilling assistance a few months prior. As furious as she felt towards their stance on pirates, she respected them well enough to avoid such a loss of face. 

Law merely brushed her warning aside. “We leave within the hour. Do I look concerned?”

“Do you ever?” she challenged. Law resembled a man casual in the face of risk. And while she repeated the warning of her teachers privately, Rill couldn't will herself away from this pirate. Not when he was a possible source for information.

“How long have you been in Chantara?”

“The last few days,” he answered rather easily.

She tried not to let his smile unnerve her. “Did you see the massacre yesterday? In the market?”

Law shook his head, pausing to order another drink before he patted the seat beside him. She sat down, turning toward him with her knees.

“Bepo did. It wasn’t the Kid pirates if that’s what you’re wondering.”

A terrible pang gutted her at the mention of the Kid pirates. She swallowed and dropped his gaze, willing the sensation to still. “No, I know it wasn’t them. I heard it might be another group… have you heard of the Strawhat Pirates?”

Again, Law shook his head. He watched her carefully now, and she suspected he had caught her disconnect a moment ago when he mentioned Kid. Or maybe he was noticing her other symptoms, like the faint coating of sweat that saturated her forehead, or her eyes, hooded and circled with black bags. Rill wasn’t well, and Law, a doctor, likely noticed without her needing to bore him with the details.

She wondered if she was as pale and shaken as she felt.

“No,” Law replied, answering her question. Rill wished she still had the bounty to show him his likeness. “They wore straw hats, though – I saw the pirates, not the commotion,” he added when she looked confused.

“Like those,” he said, pointing with his thumb to a patron wearing a conical hat.

“Those are bamboo hats, not straw,” she said, relief spreading through her as she stared at the farmer engaged in a loud retelling of yesterday’s tragedy.

“Do I care?”

“I do!” Rill smiled, thankful to know the murderers weren’t her brother and his crew, that he had played no role in the slaying of innocent civilians.

If Law was curious for clarification, he didn’t press her for it and Rill didn’t feel the urgency to explain. She almost considered ordering her own drink, then recalled what happened the last time she drank with Law.

Rill didn’t consider herself monogamous with Smoker, but the idea of juggling two men at once felt like more work than she desired.  

“You’re intelligent,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t resist her attempt to pick his brain. “What do you know about Krakens?”

“I know enough to stay away from them,” Law answered, picking up his second drink. Music hummed around them as people shouted and partied to the beat of an excited drum. 

Rill frowned at his curious comment. “Stay away from them?”

“Did you encounter a Kraken, Rill?”

Rill stared at him, perplexed. “Yes. Have you?”

Law shook his head.

She pried for information, frustrated that Law was unsealable. “What do you know about Krakens?”

“More than you I can gather.”

“They’ve been extinct for hundreds of years,” Rill told him uncertainly, quoting her professor’s earlier remark.

“No, they haven’t, Rill.”

His words didn’t place right - she would bet would little funds she had left to her name that Law knew plenty to satisfy her thirst for information. Rill glanced around them, wondering if this was a hallucinatory figment her fevered mind had concocted and was relieved that she was still drenched with sweat and unconquerable shakes. 

“Tell me everything you know about krakens,” she pressed firmly.

“I haven’t got the time for that,” Law mused, his eyes flickering over the crowd. His lips were drawn in an amused smile, one she was tempted to remove with her own fist.

“If you want me to bribe you, I haven’t got any money.”

“Tell you what. Tell me everything you know about the White Hunter, and I’ll give you a lesson on krakens.”

Rill frowned, surprised that Law already knew she was part of Smoker’s convoy. “That depends on what you want to know…”

“I don’t have time for games, girl.”

“Call me Rill or call me nothing.”

He split into a wicked grin. “And that’s about all the time I have for nothing today.”

“Alright,” Rill hurried, defeated by his game. She wondered how Smoker would feel hearing her describe him to a wanted pirate. “I don’t know much about him. He’s a captain, he’s a devil fruit user, and he’s hunting down my younger brother. He’s strong?”

Law quirked a brow. “Does he know he’s hunting down your brother?”

“No.” She didn’t meet his eyes as she spoke. She wasn’t sure if such information mattered to Law, but she suspected he was enjoying how easily he discomforted her.

“Where’s his next destination?”

“I don’t know what’s on course from here.”

“Iokra, it has a pretty hefty Navy base. Nothing my crew can’t handle but I’ve heard that White Hunter is quite the mad dog.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rill said. “We’ll be sailing past it. I think we’re going only to get a new ship.”

“Then I better get ahead of you.”

“Law,” she called out when he tried to step past her. 

“You’re right, in a sense. Krakens – the mountainous, sea splitting ones – died out hundreds of years ago. The smaller ones-“

“Lesser Krakens,” she encouraged.

“Still exist, in smaller numbers. Where do you think Kraken’s breath comes from?”

Rill’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been wondering that since yesterday. I always assumed the name was a tribute from merpeople.”

“Merpeople revere krakens as protectors of the sea. Enemy of sailors, pirates, and navy dogs alike.”

“How is it that every scholar back in the archipelago doesn’t know this?”

“Because scholars seldom make company with pirates or black traders. Though I wouldn’t be surprised to find a council of crooks amongst Mariejois University.”

She wondered if it was possible Dr. Megalodon knew the existence of them.

Law continued despite her divided concentration. “What surprises me, Rill, is that you encountered a Kraken between here and Lauffodil. They hail from the North Pole.”

“The weather patterns have been perilous along the Grand Line,” Rill murmured. “We’ve noticed more anomalies than normal. I think a current brought him here.  _ And my name is Rill! _ ”

“Anything’s possible,” Law agreed.

“So Krakens have existed this whole time...” Rill mused aloud.

“I have to go get going,” he said, nodding to the massive polar bear wrapped in an orange suit heading toward them.

“Thank you, Law.”

He waved his fingers, not even turning back to glance at her as he joined Bepo and the rest of the Heart Pirates. Rill marvelled over her new feed of details, wondering how on earth she could be so unaware of a world she felt so familiar with. Her pursuit of knowledge left her devouring book after book, so much so that for the longest time it felt as though nothing could surprise her. 

But since she left Mariejois University, it seemed every other day something unsettling and new had traversed into her world, seizing her and capturing her off guard. And then there was Law, who seem shrouded with wisdom and secrets, always ready to remind her how ignorant she was in comparison.

She couldn’t help but admire the pirate - while he operated on the crooked side of the law, he was no less intelligent than the brilliant minds that surrounded her everyday. Perhaps even moreso.  

* * *

Rill used what meager funds she had left to her name to purchase a monocular and a flare gun of her own, ones that could clip onto her khakis. The scholarship provided her with a monthly stipend, but Rill had lost most of her allowance in the ship wreckage. Her hotel for the night was sponsored by the university, but Rill knew she’d have to eventually work back into Hypher’s good graces if she expected to eat over the next day or so.

She set up a post on the dock outside of her hotel, ignoring the ship manager and current of people that passed through. She kept surveying every ship that sailed by, relieved when she found people strolling along the deck or climbing the ratlines. Rill wondered if it was possible to find another ghost ship, but she knew what she was looking for, and while not one for superstition, her brothers had taught her that a survivor relied on their gut instinct. For all the trouble she had stumbled upon, Rill welcomed the search for danger under her own decision.

No one from the university group came by to check on her. No one came for her at all, and still Rill sat on her barrel, determined to inspect every ship that passed by. If the fates awarded her with a ghost ship - an undamaged, floating vessel - Rill planned to use her remaining berries to rent a dinghy and row herself to its side.

Rill waited until nightfall when the highway of passing ships had diminished into a clear, midnight stretch as far as her eyes could see. Rill saw a ship maybe every hour after that, her focus occasionally tempted by the rowdy strings and vocals from the tavern just a few log paths over.

It was late into the night under a bath of cool moonlight that Rill noticed another ship drifting south. She raised the monocular to her eyes, skimming over the crow’s nest and sails, identifying another unknown jolly roger limp against the windless night.

Rill swallowed as she surveyed the main deck, the quarter deck, the wheel – and found no skirmish on board, no dents in the wood carvings, no spillage of blood or entrails anywhere, not a living soul or any evidence of a deceased one.

She hurried into the hotel, ringing the little bell on the desk of the hotel’s clerk. A young, weathered man came from behind a door, muttering about needless clanging. She gave him the last of her credit, realising this was a gamble she hadn’t expected would leave her so vulnerable. After shutting his cash register, the clerk followed her outside, unlocking a shed beside the hotel and handing her two wooden oars before pointing to the three dinghies bobbing against the dock.

Rill made haste towards the dinghies, unknotting the one nearest the open water, jumping onto the bench seat and propping the oars into the ocean. It took her only minutes to navigate out of the harbour, her arms working tirelessly as she propelled the little dinghy towards the coasting ship. A long, throbbing ache started under her arms, but she forced herself to keep count - <em>1, 2, 3, and 4 and 1, 2, 3, and 4, and 1, 2, 3, and 4 <em> – as she rowed toward the looming side of the ship. The pain was nothing compared to the terrible spasms erupting along her skull.

It took maybe ten minutes, but Rill eventually reached the ghost ship. She was drenched in a cool sweat, her body shaken by chills and chattering teeth. Her clothes stuck to her as she climbed onto the step ladder protruding from the edge of the ship. She was almost delirious in her obsession to scale it, wondering what she would find once she finally reached the deck and looked around.

As she climbed over the side, Rill finally found her first contact with blood, a scarlet handprint on the railing of the ship. She stumbled onto the deck, her eyes trained on the bloody print. She dared her gaze away from it, sweeping over the sails, then deck. Bad idea. What was she thinking, climbing aboard a ghost ship under mysterious pretenses and stumbling onto a possible massacre.

But it was one solitary print and as Rill tiptoed across the deck, she concentrated on the floorboards, training her eyes to find any other blood droplets. There was nothing.

Rill looked towards the darkened sky, lit with the glow of stars and the strain of the moon. It looked like a quieter shade of the sun, a beacon her eyes could bear. She heard something shift behind her and, dropping her fascinated gaze, slammed harshly onto her knees as something strong wrapped around her arms and pinned her to the ground.

She could feel claws digging into her wrists – Rill didn’t understand what had a hold of her, but it certainly felt more animalistic than human as she flailed on the ground, desperately trying to sweep the legs of her attacker out from under them. She thrashed backward, shoving her skull up against the creature’s face, and finally caught a glimpse of the monster towering above her.

Its skin was amphibious and teal, greatly shadowed under the moonlit sky, and from his mouth she counted dozens of sharp, fanged teeth baring at her with a snarl and yellow, slitted eyes. Rill couldn’t place this creature in any of our textbooks, but she recognized its cunning intelligence as it avoided the second kick from her legs attempting to send him buckling to his knees. When it failed, Rill rolled out from under him, thrusting her elbow into his calf and relieved when the creature uttered a mangled scream. She moved as he crouched forward, jumping back onto her feet and running for the ratlines.

Throwing herself onto the rope, Rill ignored the burn that ignited her bleeding wrists, trying to dispel the terrible ring in her ears as she heaved herself up, using her legs to make the climb and keep her weaker arms focused on maintaining a grip on the rat lines. The monster was right on her heels, following close behind her, and Rill screamed as its sharp, narrow teeth bit into her ankle.

Nearly falling back into his pull, Rill instead kicked back into his teeth, satisfied to hear a sickening crunch. She scrambled faster, ignoring the delirious heat coating her skull, the terrible throng of pain enclosing around her as she willed her body to survive. In a final desperate move, Rill released the flare gun from her hip, aiming towards the moon and firing just as the creature slammed into her again, causing her direction to shoot into the mast instead.

The two of them watched, momentarily struck by the fire that engulfed the white sails. They burned brightly, incinerating the white threads, and Rill turned around, noticing a couple of rowboats making their way towards the ship.

“Thank god,” she murmured, debating on jumping in the ocean but knowing that if the monster had such swift, languid movements on land that it would certainly triumph her in the sea.

Instead, she watched in satisfaction as it dove back into the waters, likely waiting for when she would retreat in the same manner.

Rill climbed off the ratlines, nearly tipping over from dizziness as her feet made contact with the deck. She threw herself over the railing, coughing as the smoke clouded around her. Black spots cratered her vision, and her throat felt tight and constricted around the air, coughing more than breathing. She used the last of her strength to lift herself onto the edge of the ship, knowing in a mere moment she would be tipping over. Rill slipped into darkness as she sank forward, not noticing the strong hands that suspended her from her fall.

* * *

“ _ There you are _ .”

Rill opened her eyes, shuddering when she realised it was Hypher hovering above her and not her older brother. Rill hadn’t expected to dream of Ace, Ace draped in fire, his rage and anguish setting everything aflame as she choked from the smoke engulfing them. A heavy sweat drenched her body but Rill didn’t care as she accepted the despairingly realistic nightmare as nothing more than such.

“Night terror,” she stammered, trying to brush her obvious unease aside. “I’m-“

“If you say fine one more time, my friend,” Hypher cut her off. “I had to tell the professors. I’m sorry. But you need to know…”

Rill closed her eyes, accepting that she was nowhere close to fine in her current state. “What did you do? Where am I?”

“You’ve been poisoned with Kraken's breath, Rill.” Isamu interrupted from beyond her range of vision. “What were you thinking? You went and lit a ship on fire! You’re lucky it was a ghost ship, Rill!”

She wiped at the sweat on her forehead with the back of her hand, annoyed by how hot her own touch was. “Okay, my objective was not to light anything on fire. I was aiming for the sky when the monster slammed into me and disrupted my course!”

“What monster, Rill?! What are you rambling about?”

“I’m not insane,” Rill snapped. “I’m not feeling well but I am not deranged. I went to investigate the ghost ship. It was the third undamaged, floating ship I’ve seen on these waters, and Captain Kid heard a rumour of ghost ships floating uninterrupted on the waters right before terrible attacks!”

“So you thought it was a good idea to investigate? On your own?”

“It was curiosity. And it was my own free time,” she muttered defensively.

“It was destructive and deranged! You say you’re not hysterical, but your behaviour is unsettling and dangerous!”

“What would I have to gain making up a sea monster? You won’t believe me about the Kraken, I didn’t want to share my  _ inane ramblings _ with people who question my observations! I took a charge of a curiosity and I apologise that it resulted in needless destruction but I am not the root of it! I was attacked!”

She presented her wrists to them, expecting to see huge gashes in her wrists, but they were not as deep and damaging as she remembered in her delirious state. She frowned, reluctant to admit that they looked like red scrapes and cuts, but nothing life-threatening.

“There was no sea monster,” Isamu said impatiently. “You’re delirious, you’re breaking a fever of 40  … I don’t know what you were thinking but the fact is, you shouldn’t have done it!”

Rill fell silent, defeated by their disregard for her explanations. She trained her eyes on Hypher, wondering if it was too much to believe he might reserve some faith in her assurances. He continued smiling at her, obviously feeling apologetic for their earlier disagreement.

“I’m sorry,” Rill said at last. She couldn’t convince herself to mean it. Whether her professors sensed the truth, she didn’t care.

“Unfortunately, a sorry is not enough,” Dr. Megalodon said from afar. He stepped into her field of vision, standing at the end of her bed appearing weathered and worried. She noticed the solemn look in his eye and welcomed the dread that spilled to her gut.

Hypher wouldn’t meet her eyes as Dr. Meg began to speak. 

“Due to your recent… foolish and highly illogical choices, Miss Monkey, I have no choice but to declare for you own safety… that you are suspended from this internship pending a psychiatric review. We will seek arrangements to have you taken back to the archipelago. Until then… rest. And please, stay out of trouble.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaah, I'm so impressed I managed to write this within a month!! That's like... unheard of for me. I'm very, very slow when it comes to updating but I've been trying to improve. Thanks so much for reading, guys! If you'd ever like to chat, you can catch me on tumblr as [persaphonc](http://persaphonc.tumblr.com/). Please leave a review, I do love them reading them, they're, like, the highlight of my day!


End file.
